In need of a miracle
by brfanficwriter
Summary: Jason Todd knew he was a messed up guy, that fact was no secret to anyone. But to think that even his body deemed him unworthy of living was a whole new level of messed up. How can he cope with living through hell, vigilanting and pretending he's normal? I DON'T OWN THE COVER IMAGE!
1. Fainting guy

_**I am not a doctor, so there might be some medical expressions or contexts that might be wrong. If you are a qualified professional and notice any mistake, please do notice me and I will do my best to improve. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy this fanfic as much as I enjoyed writing it.**_

 _ **Also, in this fic Jason and Bruce have made peace with each other and Jason works with the bats from time to time**_

* * *

Jason sighed as he waited in the line to the check out. His vision was blurry and he definitely had a fever there. All he wanted to do was pay for his beer and go home where he could pop some aspirin and crash on his couch, but of course the one grocery store near his apartment needed to have the world's slowest cashier. He swore he would track down this guy later and plant a bullet in-between his eyes, but now he needed the man so he could get his beer. He swayed a little on his feet and maybe the other customers noticed because they were giving him some worried glances. He glared at them as to tell them it was nothing and they should mind their own business, but the world was spinning too much for him to keep at it for too long. He dropped his beer-pack on the ground and held his knees so they didn't buckle under him. He could hear some rustling around him, but the whistling on his ear was too loud for him to make out much of it. Jason felt someone put their hand on his shoulder and he quickly slapped the offending hand off

"Are you alright, sir?" It was the freaking cashier who had came to check on him, and Jason didn't need his concern, he needed his beer, which, now that he noticed it, was smashed on the ground beside him. As he was about to tell the guy to 'fuck off and go back to his business', though, the world suddenly became black and as he was about to pass out, Jason heard someone shrieking and someone else shouting for anyone to call an ambulance. _'Not an ambulance. I'm fine, just leave me alone.'_ were the last conscious thoughts Jason managed to have before he swam into the darkness

Jason woke up to the nauseating smell of disinfectant, blinding lights and an annoying beeping in his head. He tried lifting his eyelids, but the world was too bright for him to manage to do it in one try. After a few painful tries, though, his eyelids could keep open for longer than some instants. He tried to make out the blurry forms he was seeing, and decided to give it a few more seconds before the world started to make sense around him. Sure enough, he recognized the room he was in, a hospital room. The beeping he heard came from a heart monitoring machine that was connected to him, and it was getting increasingly louder as his mind went into overdrive. He instinctively pulled out the electrodes that were attached to him and the machine gave out a loud annoying sound, but Jason couldn't care less as he hurried to rip out the IV connected to him. Just as he jumped out of the bed, his vision swam and he held on to the bed frame so he didn't pass out, _again_. This little bit of time was enough for a nurse to come in rushing to the room, followed by a doctor and another nurse. She gasped at the sight of the patient, and the other nurse rushed to Jason and put his hand on Jason's shoulder, steering him back to the bed. Jason shrugged the nurse off of him and focused on deep breaths in order not to pass out. He heard some shuffle and a clean, white pair of shoes appeared on the right corner of his vision.

"You are in safe hands, but we need you to rest." He heard the doctor tell him in an infuriatingly placating tone of voice, Jason's knees couldn't hold his weight anymore and he fell to the ground. The two nurses tried to help him back into his bed, but the doctor stopped them "My name is Doctor Geller, all I want to do is to help you. Can you hear me?" Jason nodded his head as he rested it in his arms, which rested on his knees "On a scale of one to ten, how would you describe the pain you feel?"

"Zero." He grumbled out and the doctor sighed, not at all believing him

"Let's try it in a different way. On a scale of one to ten, how would you describe the discomfort you feel?"

"I'm fine. I just need my couch and a beer." Jason tried standing up, but his muscles didn't obey him. He was feeling as tired as he usually was after the roughest of the patrols, which was weird, seeing as he didn't patrol at all the last two days

"I'm sure you do." The kind doctor said with a smile "You will go home after we perform a few last exams on you. So work with us, alright?" Jason sighed and nodded, mostly because it would be a lot of work to sneak from the hospital right now and he wasn't in the shape for that "Thank you. Well, for starters, would you tell me your name? You didn't have anything we could identify you with."

"Jason."

"Jason…"

"Todd." Jason answered with a sigh, he hated handing out his name now. Why did that stupid Bruce decided they should announce it publicly that Jason was alive? Now everyone looked at him different once they know his name

"Oh, I see. Do you want to call your family?"

"No!" Jason answered a little too fast, which made the doctor laugh a little

"Alright, then, we won't. Now, how about you go back to your bed?" Jason sighed again, dreading making his muscles do that much workout, but dreading even more that the doctor would think that there was something wrong with him and would keep him even longer than needed in here. With a herculean amount of effort, Jason managed to get on his feet, and as his knees hobbled, he was figuring out a way to get on the bed. The nurses were trying to help him, but Jason didn't want their help, he was a grown-ass man, he could do it by himself. After about five minutes, Jason managed to get on top of the bed, even if he was sweating buckets and panting so much he could pass out. The nurse took out another syringe and tried to grab Jason's arm, but even in this state, Jason had enough strength to tell him to 'fuck off'. The doctor stopped the nurse from trying it again, saying that there was no need to if he didn't want to, and Jason was seriously starting to like this dude. He was beginning to doze off, but he was going to hold himself until there was no one else in the room. The three professionals seemed to get the hint as they all got out of the room, and as soon as Jason saw the sound of the door closing, he fell back into dreamland

The buzzing of his cell phone was what woke Jason up. He fished it from the hidden pocket on his t-shirt and looked at the screen to recognize Tim's phone number –Jason didn't keep any numbers registered in his phone so he could use it both at day and at _night_.

"What do you want?" He grumbled out

"Whoa, good evening for you too." Tim's voice was annoying Jason way more than it should "You sound sleepy. Did I wake you?" Oh, the disapproval tone

"As if you're one to talk about sleeping habits. What do you want?"

"I'm in your apartment and I'm looking for those files you borrowed from me last week."

"Third drawer on my desk."

"Ooh, cool, thanks."

Jason's sleep fogged mind didn't properly register the fact that Tim was at _his apartment_ "Wait, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY PLACE?!" but it was too late when he realized, as he didn't have time to yell at him for that

Jason grumbled to himself something about 'fucking replacements' and 'payback' when he glanced back at his arm to see the freaking needle was back to its place. He grumbled some more acid things and quickly removed it. His mind wasn't swimming as much as it was before, so Jason figured it was safe to stand up. Sure enough, his knees didn't buckle under him. He looked around the room for his jacket and found it draped over the back of the chair beside his table, he quickly put it on and as he reached for the doorknob, the door suddenly opened, jump scaring both Jason and the doctor

"Jesus, Mister Todd, can't you lay still in your bed?" Doctor Geller asked, holding his heart that threatened to jump out of his ribcage

"You traitor!" Jason said holding the neck of the doctor's shirt, but he didn't have enough strength to do anything other than crumple it

"What?" Jason let go of the doctor so he could point at the discarded needle and the hole in his arm "Oh, that. I'm sorry, but you aren't my first stubborn patient, and it was easier to trick you than to force the needle in you."

"What did you come here to do, Geller? I hope you've come here to let me go!" At that, the doctor's face got a somber tone, and he pushed Jason until he sat down on the chair

"Mr- Jason, we are going to ask you a few questions, and I need you to answer them honestly." Jason didn't like the tone of the conversation, but he nodded anyway

"Do you smoke?" a petite doctor asked. Jason hadn't noticed her before, and immediately got on defensive

"Who the fuck are you?" he growled out

"She's Doctor Cassidy, a specialist I am asking advice to." Geller answered for her

"A specialist? For what?"

"It might be just me overreacting."

"A specialist for what?"

"Oncology." Cassidy answered shortly

"The hell? I don't have fucking _cancer_."

"We hope you don't, so let's be sure of it first." She said in a calm tone. Jason swallowed hard and nodded at her "Do you smoke?"

"I need one right now." At Cassidy's raised eyebrow, he smirked "What do you think?"

"How many packs do you smoke?"

"One or two. Three on the bad days."

"Do you have any family history of blood diseases?"

"I have no idea."

"Okay. Did you feel faint, short of breath of feverish lately?"

"Considering I got here 'cause I fainted at the grocery store, yeah."

"Have you had any nosebleeds?" Jason paused a little before answering

"Yeah, what about it?" he eyed her suspiciously

"Have you noticed any lasting bruises or bruises that you don't know how you got them?"

"Where are you getting at?" Cassidy's face got even sober, if it was possible, and she motioned Geller to meet her outside the room "Hey! Get the fuck back here!" When Jason found the strength in his legs once again, he was too late already because the two doctors were back on the room

"Mr. Todd, we need you to perform a bone marrow biopsy. The room and the anesthesiologist will both be ready in about one hour. We need you to sign these documents and the instructions for the procedure are written in these papers." Geller said as he handed out two sets of papers to Jason, who numbly took them

"What? Wait, wait, WAIT! The fuck is this! I won't do any biopsy 'cause, guess what, I ain't got no fucking cancer!"

"Mr. Todd, I hate to break it to you, but you do have something, even in the case it's not cancer, which I bet my career as a doctor that you do. We need you to do this exam so we know what we're dealing with and we can help you. So stop acting like a stubborn child and _let me help you_!" Cassidy shouted, getting even closer to Jason's face until he sat back down on his chair "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have screamed at you. I will get the operation room ready." With that, she rushed out of the door

Geller looked as though he wanted to say something to make things better, but realizing there was nothing he could do, he also got out of the room.

Jason just sat at the chair, staring at the wall as he tried to sink in the fact that he was going to die again


	2. I ain't got cancer!

_**Again, I am not a doctor and I appreciate it if you notify me about any medical mistakes I make in this story. Please don't take any medical knowledge in this fanfic seriously, and I hope you enjoy it. I apologize in advance for any mistakes.**_

* * *

"Mr. Todd, are you ready?" a nurse said as she entered the room pushing a wheel chair. Jason hadn't moved an inch from his spot in the last hour, and he was leafing through the procedure instructions for what must have been the hundredth time

"Are they seriously going to put a needle in my bone?"

"Yes, but you will be numbed, you won't feel a thing." Jason stopped flipping through the booklet (which he must have memorized by now) to stare at her

"A needle. In my _bone_. There's no way that shit won't hurt."

"It's a necessary evil." Jason gathered all of the courage that he had in him and stood up and walked around the nurse

"I won't sit on that." The nurse sighed and guided him to where the exam would take place, as she had been warned before of how difficult Jason could be. As they approached the room, Jason quickly stopped and signed the papers on the wall, seeing as he had forgotten to do it

"I'm glad to see you came." Cassidy said from the doorway

"Yeah, if only to rub it in your face once the exam shows I'm perfectly healthy."

"I honestly hope you do get to rub it in my face, Jason." And judging from her tone, Jason could tell she really did

Once he was numbed and had a sneak peek of his ass to show Cassidy, Jason started to get real nervous again

"So, on a scale from bumping into a table and stepping on a Lego, how much will this shit hurt?" Cassidy smiled at that from behind her surgical mask

"You shouldn't feel a thing, but if you do, it will be at worst the pain level of scratching your knee."

"Hmm. So, if it hurts, will you kiss my boo-boo?"

"Do you want me to kiss your ass?"

"I want you to kiss other things of mine, not my ass."

"Your flirting might make me make a mistake."

"So long as you don't hurt my perfect ass, I'm cool."

"Don't worry, your perfect ass will be intact." She smirked briefly before getting serious again and pulling back on the plunger. Jason sucked in a breath

"Hey! Ouch! You said it didn't hurt!"

"Don't move, it will hurt more if you do."

"Hurry up!" Jason held still for as long as he could, fisting the fabric beside his head like his life depended on it

"Almost over." When Jason thought he couldn't hold still anymore, the pain started to die down "And… done!" Jason sort of felt her pulling up his boxers, or maybe he just heard the sound and imagined he felt it

"Can I go now?" he panted out

"Lay down on your back and keep like that." Jason did as instructed

"So when do I come back here for you to tell me I don't have cancer?"

"Tomorrow at 5 p.m." as Jason moved to stand up, Cassidy put her hand on his chest to push him back down "A nurse will come tell you when you can get up. If you bleed on the area of the biopsy, call the hospital." She said as she walked out of the room

"Why not call you?" he called after her with a smirk

"See you tomorrow, Jason."

About twenty minutes later Jason was standing outside the hospital waiting for a cab. He reached inside his jacket pockets for his cigarette pack and his lighter, because he fucking deserved a smoke now. As he tried lighting the cigarette pack, though, his lighter failed him and he threw both the Zippo and the pack of cigarettes on the trash.

He groaned as all the action in the day reached his mind and bumped his head on the headrest of the back of the cab

"Long day, fella?"

"You have no idea."

After paying the taxi driver an additional amount of cash for him to forget about the ride, Jason grumbled his way up the stairs to his apartment. Overall it took him thirty minutes to get to his apartment on the fourth floor, and he thought it was a good time, considering he took about ten breaks and was about to pass out of lack of air

"I should stop smoking." He laughed to himself at the thought that it took him having cancer for him to consider stop smoking. Jason quickly entered his living room before any curious neighbors peeked their heads to see who was laughing like a maniac. He kicked out his boots and got a water bottle from his fridge. He slumped down on the couch and quickly slided to his side because the puncture wound was beginning to hurt. Jason moaned his way to sleep and quickly marveled at how he slept almost the entire day before sleeping the day off

* * *

When Jason woke up, it was beginning to dawn outside. He considered eating breakfast but just the thought of doing so made him want to puke, so he went for the plan of spending the day on his couch until he had to go to the hospital, which to him was a good plan.

At around noon, his cell phone rang. Jason turned his attention from the crappy reality TV show he was watching to see who was calling him. Blood ran out of his face when he saw the call was from the batcave. Ignoring the pain on his hip, he sat up and looked around his apartment like a prison escapee as if either Bruce or Alfred was there watching his every move

"Hello?" he tried a neutral tone, testing out the waters

"Good morning Jason, glad to hear that you're alive, because then there is **no reason for you not to appear on the stakeout last night**." Shit. Jason had completely forgotten about that, and simply because he finally had a good excuse he couldn't use it. He wondered how Bruce would react if he just said _'Oh, my bad, but, you see, I was busy getting poked to see if I had cancer or not.'_. Probably he would say it wasn't a good enough reason for him to not go to the stakeout. Or he could get all caring and stuff, which would be too creepy for Jason to deal with it. Either way he didn't want to know.

"Oh, sorry, I totally forgot about that." Made him sound like a big jerk, but at least it didn't have the 'C' word on it

"Forgot? You **forgot** about one of the most important actions of the year and all you say about it is **sorry?** "

"Ack, come on, it's not like it went to shit without me!"

"We did manage to arrest the drug group, but at a price."

"Yeah? And what was that?"

"Damian got shot in the chest."

"Oh, really, well then give the little demon my condolences and call Talia to come kiss his ouchie." Jason barked at Bruce and cut off the call. Not even a minute later his phone rang and Jason answered it before even checking who was calling, because he didn't need to "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, BRUCE?! AN APOLOGY?"

"Um, is this Jason Todd?" A woman's voice sounded in his ear and Jason quickly looked at his phone's screen to see it wasn't the batcave that was calling him

"Oh, shit, my bad, I thought you were someone else."

"No need to apologize, Jason. This is Doctor Cassidy from Gotham Hospital, do you remember me?"

"Cassidy, yeah, sure. What's up?"

"I need you to come to the hospital at your earliest convenience. When can you come?"

"I'm free right now. Why? Something wrong with the exam?"

"I have to tell you in person."

"I'll be there in about an hour."

"I'll wait for you." Jason listened for the beeps that signaled the call was over for a few moments before letting go of his cell phone. The device laid forgotten on his couch as its owner got up, got his jacket and left the room. Only when he got out on the streets did Jason consider that he should've changed clothes, but right now he couldn't care less. His movements were completely robotic as he got to the hospital. He was so deep in thought the receptionist had to call him three times. Jason shook his head as he grabbed the doorknob and entered the room.

"Mr. Todd." Cassidy greeted him as they shook hands. She gestured to the empty chair in front of her desk and motioned for him to take a seat as she closed the door

"Why're you so serious all of a sudden?" Jason said with a nervous smirk, trying to break the palpable tension in the air. Cassidy didn't answer him right away as she looked for a couple papers in her stack. She spreaded out five paper sheets in front of him, all filled with numbers and words Jason had no idea what they meant

"These are the results of the blood tests and the bone marrow biopsy we performed on you." Even with the medical knowledge he got from working under the bat, Jason couldn't tell if these numbers told him whether he was sick or not "Do you know how blood cells are formed?" Jason shrugged "Well, normal blood cells develop from stem cells that have the potential to become many cell types. Myeloid stem cells mature in the bone marrow and become immature white cells called myeloid blasts. These myeloid blasts further mature to become either red blood cells, platelets, or certain kinds of white blood cells. Lymphoid stem cells mature in the bone marrow to become lymphoid blasts. The lymphoid blasts develop further into T or B lymphocytes, special types of white blood cells."

"And why are you explaining all this to me?"

"Your exams showed an abnormality in your white cells, and further examination diagnosed the problem came from your myeloid cells. I'm sorry, Jason."

"So, I guess I won't be rubbing it in your face after all." It was taking everything Jason had not to scream at the doctor, yell at her that she made a mistake and he wasn't going to die, to take out his guns and murder every living being in this hospital, no, the entire city. But a part of him knew that it wasn't a mistake, he knew something was wrong with him even before he passed out in the grocery store

"You were diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, we need to start with treatment immediately until we get a remission. A remission is when a patient doesn't have any cancer cells in his system and that is our primary goal with treatment, I will give you a different therapy once we achieve remission so that the cancer doesn't relapse. I will prescribe you some medicines and you will start your chemotherapy with them. I want you to come to the hospital this week again so we can give you stronger medicines. The chemotherapy is given out in cycles, and in your case, we will start with weekly sessions. Is there any questions you have?"

"How long until I drop dead?" the doctor sighed as she stopped writing out the prescriptions

"Generally acute leukemias can be cured with the right treatment."

"How much is generally?"

"For your type of leukemia, people in your age group have a 60 percent 5-year survival rate."

"So I've got five years?"

"Jason, you can't go into treatment with that mindset. You have to believe you will get better. The mind has a lot more power than you think."

"You know, Cassidy, I liked you a whole lot more yesterday. You didn't look like those doctors that hand out pretty words so that the patient could be at ease, I thought you wouldn't spare me any words if I really turned out to be sick, but I thought I was wrong." Cassidy was shocked for a moment before she found her words

"I don't want to scare you."

"Why? Because you think I might not show up if you do?"

"Yes, that's the reason. Cancer isn't pretty and the treatment for it is even uglier! The patient loses hair, loses weight, pukes, has diarrhea, and I've had some patients feel so much pain they literally beg me to kill them! This is the hell-show you will be walking into, but if you want to live, then that's your only shot! So man up and take whatever I throw at you!" That might be the first time in Jason's life someone scared him so much with only words. He knew what dying's like, and he didn't want to repeat the experience, but just hearing about the treatment was enough to make him feel like puking

"You really believe I'm gonna live?"

"I will do my half of the deal and treat you to the best of my abilities, so you have to do your half of the deal and be willing to live."

"Is it that much of a shit-show?" Jason asked, looking from his hand to her face

"You have no idea." The two stared at each other for a few seconds until Jason looked away and Cassidy went back to writing

"That's a lot of medicines." He commented when Cassidy finished giving him the prescriptions and instructions on the schedule of his medicines

"You can get them at the hospital pharmacy." He nodded absent-mindedly as he tried to engrave in his memory the names of the pills that will screw with his body "Also, this-" She handed him some cancer group pamphlets

"The hell?! I ain't gonna go to this!"

"You don't have to but-"

"No! It's bad enough that I'm already shitting my pants even before the treatment began, I won't go to this pussy group to cry about my problems!" Cassidy just stared at him, she looked like she wanted to say something to him, but she didn't. However, she stopped him when he was going to crumple them and throw them away

"At least keep them, or I will stuff your pockets with these pamphlets every time I see your face, and trust me when I say that we will be seeing each other very often now." Her hand on his, the intense stare she was giving him and her words were too much for Jason to let it pass

"Wait, are you asking me out on a date?" The petite doctor turned beet-red and pushed Jason out of her office

"Just go grab your medicines!" she yelled as she shoved his exam results in his chest and slammed the door on his laughing face

* * *

"Okay, so, Reasons to live!" Jason said excitedly to himself as he rubbed his hands. The first reason was easy. 'Clean Gotham of its evil.' was what he wrote on the notebook he had in front of him in his kitchen counter. The second one was fairly easy as well, 'Eat Alfred's cookies.'. 'Annoy the Replacement.'. 'Annoy Dick.'. 'Annoy Bruce.'. 'Annoy the Demon.' He grabbed the eraser and erased the last four things he wrote and put 'Annoy all the bats.' in its place. This list was looking good for him. What else could he write on it? 'Beer.'. 'Kill the Joker.', now that one was important

Jason was running out of things to write down when his cell phone rang. He recognized the number as being Dick's

" 'Sup?"

"Hey, you home?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"I need your help with a case."

" 'Kay, just come through the front door like a normal person."

"But I'm not normal!" Dick said laughing and Jason cut the call on him. He hurried to hide all things related to cancer in his house, and there was no better place to hide things than the sock drawer. He was beginning to sweat when he heard the front door open. He snarled and walked to the living room to see Dick rummaging through his fridge

"Hey! Keep away from my food!" Dick poked his head out and gave Jason the least innocent-looking innocent eyes

"But there's basically no food in here. And I'm looking for the coke I bought the last time I came here. Where is it?"

"I threw that junk down the drain, what did you expect?"

"Aw, you suck."

"Thanks. Now, you said you had some _actual_ business with me?"

"It's in the folder on the coffee table." Jason took the folder and slumped on the couch

"What about it?" His heart almost jumped out of his ribcage when Dick somersaulted the couch and landed beside him. The old couch wobbled but stood firm in its place "Don't do that, freak!" he yelled at his brother as he held his heart in place, but Dick pretended to ignore him and flipped through the pages on the folder as he explained his thoughts on the recent actions of the drug dealer he was currently dealing with

"Ramona, huh. I thought I had taken off his pinky finger back when I first came back." Jason smirked at the memories and Dick glared at him

"Let's forget about your barbaric tendencies for a while and focus on this."

"So, your problem is that you don't know whether he'll flee from pier 30 or pier 19?"

"Yeah."

"Why not attack them both?" Dick glared at him again

"That was the original plan, but Damian got hurt last night."

"Oh, right. Sorry. How is he?"

"Complaining that Bruce is being a tyrant and that he can still patrol even with a purple bruise taking over most of his chest. He would be better if Talia came to kiss his ouchie." Jason winced at Dick's tone

"That treacherous bat. I hope he didn't distort the facts when he told you."

"He didn't have to. We were all in the cave at the time. Tim's making fun of Damian until now." Jason chuckled at that

"I wonder how the bat's face must have looked like." Dick barked out a laugh

"Oh, it was priceless." Jason looked down at the map in front of him

"So, usually, people would choose pier 30 because it's closer to the sea." Dick nodded. He thought that too "But, if you take pier 19, there's a lower chance of the cops appearing because it's a bit farther." Dick kept nodding as Jason explained things to him "Pier 30, however, has some dirty cops taking control of it, and with the right amount of cash, you can make a quick and cop-free ride, which also makes pier 30 appealing to most illegal vendors." Dick snorted at that. Illegal vendors was a huge understatement

"So, pier 30?"

"Did you hear anything I just said? Ramona is too much of a sewer rat to give up any of his cash, even if it made his life easier. Of course he's gonna take pier 19."

"That's what I originally thought. But I got some intel that Ramona has a new right hand man that's changing the way he deals."

"Okay, now that makes things a whole lot different." Jason frowned at the paper. His vision was starting to swim a little and it was getting hard to focus

"So, what do you think?" Jason shook his head to clear out his mind "Hey, maybe you could join us. That way we can split up in two groups." Jason shook his head again "Aw, come on, Jay, pleeease. If we don't get this guy next week he'll leave on a ship to Africa and we'll never be able to get him again!" Dick was shaking Jason so hard it was hurting him and making him want to puke

"Okay, fine, stop whining!"Jason said as he shrugged Dick off of him

"Yay!"Dick went to hug Jason, but the younger kicked him on the stomach

"Just go away!" Dick laughed as he deflected the pillows Jason threw at him and moved to the window

"Don't forget, okay?" He said and then jumped out of the window in order to get away from the knife Jason threw at him


	3. Going healthy

Whatever Jason was expecting of chemotherapy didn't compare to the real deal. His blood pressure dropped as soon as the medicine hit his blood stream and he must have looked like a baby in front of all those people, but screw him if he cared. All in all, it was hell, the thought that he had many others to follow made him want to cry, it didn't help that he had to spend the entire day in the hospital in observation and now that he was finally home all he wanted to do was melt in his bed and die in peace.

Right, Cassidy said he had to keep a positive outlook on his life. His eyes focused on the notebook he started writing. He stretched out and took it and saw the first page, with his list of reasons to live.

"This shit will need to get longer if I want to go through this." He let go of the notebook and drifted off to sleep

At five a.m., his alarm rang signaling Jason had another round of medicine to take. He didn't take long to do it since had to get up to puke and couldn't sleep since then. He considered calling someone he knew just to chat but that would be too suspicious, so he settled to counting the tiles on his roof and at some point he started creating mathematical formulas in his head to determine the size of his room. This thought was too disturbing for him

"I need a hobby." He checked the hours and saw it was already seven a.m., so he changed clothes and went grocery shopping. Lately his mind seems to be drifting off very often, something he didn't use to do before, he was proud to say he could be a very focused person if he wanted to be. He would ask Cassidy about that the next time they met. He walked in the grocery store and started rummaging through the bread section. He considered buying the whole grain kind, you know, be more healthy, but the brown color was too off-putting for his taste, so he settled for the normal kind. Next was milk. Ever since the chemo started screwing around with his body Jason's stomach seemed to prefer lactose-free, fat-free milk. He shuddered just remembering the milk incident, and nope, he didn't want a repeat of that, even if it meant drinking this disgusting think that disguised itself as milk. As he glanced down at his basket, Jason saw that it probably had more fruit than he ever bought before he got sick. Could that be considered a good thing?

"H-hello." The cashier greeted him. He looked to be really nervous somehow, and Jason remembered that this guy was there when he fainted. Shit. That was the reason he was buying his groceries at night

"Hmph." He grunted and glared at the guy, daring him to ask any questions. Thankfully the little bastard seemed to get the hint and just did what he was paid to do

"Okay, so… healthy food." Jason said to himself as he typed out the word on his cell phone browse engine. Pictures of vegetables and fruits appeared on the screen "I know what a carrot is, thank you very much. Hmmm, healthy recipes. Now we're talking!" Jason settled for a recipe of muffins, he thought he could do it. He even dug out an apron Dick gave him when he moved to a decent place and wore the pink frilly thing. Hm, who knew that something goldie chose could be useful. As he got the muffins out of the oven, he heard the sound of a camera shutter going off. He immediately got out his guns and shot at where the sound came from

"OUCH!" was the signal that he hit his target

"Give me the picture, birdy-boy, and no one gets hurt!" He demanded, stretching out his hand to Tim

"You already hurt me! And you should be getting the photo by now." He said with a smirk. Sure enough, a picture of Jason with a pink frilly apron and holding a tray of muffins appeared on his screen

"You little- who did you sent this to?!" he started shooting randomly trying to get a hit on Tim who was jumping around his kitchen like a flea

"Everyone I know. Hey, stop it! I'll tell Bruce you shot me!"

"I don't care! Stop moving, dammit!"

"I'll tell Dick you shot me!"

"I should've used real bullets on you!" Though he did stop shooting, but only because there was a chance he would be stuck with Dick on Thursday's patrol and didn't want him bitching at his ear

"Did you use brown sugar on this?" Tim asked around a mouthful of muffin

"Yeah, what about it?"

"You lost weight too."

"I'm trying to go healthy." Jason didn't want to admit it, but he's lost ten pounds already. His clothes were getting baggy and his muscles were becoming soft, but that was to be expected. Anyway, ten pounds were something he could hide from the bats, the real deal would be once he started looking like some of the people he saw at the chemo session

"Hmmm." That was the thing about Tim that annoyed the most out of Jason. He would hum and nod and all, but you could tell he was analyzing every move of his, and making up theories on his head "Are you going on an undercover mission?"

"What? The hell made you think that?"

"Oh, you know, you're on a diet and you're paler and less healthy-looking, so I thought you were preparing to go undercover as a drug addicted."

"I'm not going undercover. And I'm not paler." Him looking at his reflection on the stove top, however, gave Jason out

"Are you using drugs?"

"No!" Not the type you're thinking, at least "Did you come here to interrogate me?!"

Tim shook his head and grabbed another muffin "Dick said we're acting tonight."

"What?! Why?"

"There's been a change of move on Ramona's group. We're sure they'll flee tonight."

"Okay, and how are we going to split up?"

"Me and you on pier 19. Bruce and Dick on pier 30." He didn't know what annoyed him the most, be it that he got to spend a patrol with the replacement or that he was actually wishing he could pair up with the demon spawn "The plan will be this: We-"

"Nah, don't even bother giving me instructions. I'll shoot the baddies and you'll do your stuff." Tim furrowed his brows and was about to say something when a cheery voice beat him to it

"You'll shoot the baddies with…"

"Rubber bullets." Jason completed with a sigh

"Good boy!" Dick only got to pat Jason in the head once before he tried to bite his hand off

"What're you doing here?" Tim asked as Jason grumbled to himself about getting a vault front door

"I came in through the window." Dick answered and Jason showered him with a murderous glance

"You leave footprints all over my wall when you do that, you clumsy elephant!" Dick and Tim burst out laughing

"Did you really just call me a clumsy elephant?" Dick asked in between laughs to Jason, who was beet reed "Though, looking at how thin you are, I can see why you'd think everyone else was an elephant." Jason choked a little on his muffin

"For the last time, I DIDN'T LOSE WEIGHT!" Dick looks as though he wanted to continue the argument, but Jason cut him off "Why're you here?"

"I came to see you finally using the gift I gave you!" That was when Jason remembered he still had the freaking apron on and hastily took it off and then threw it on the trash. All the moving around and getting angry because of the two trespassers was making Jason feel sick and he leaned on the counter top. He felt something itching on his nose and when he wiped he saw blood on his hand. He softly cussed and rushed to the bathroom to get some toilet paper. He groaned when he heard Dick and Tim follow after him "What's wrong?" Dick's voice came from behind him

"Nothing, my nose's bleeding." He rolled some toilet paper and stuffed it in his nostrils. When he turned around Dick and Tim laughed at the silliness of his face

"You must be dying 'cause you're trying to be healthy." Dick said wiping his face. Yeah, that's what's killing Jason

"Shut up!" He said as he pushed past Tim and Dick and plopped down on his couch "Don't you people have life?" He groaned and wished the world would stop using his head as a trampoline

"Are you okay, Jason?"

"I'm peachy, now go away!"

"You'll be fine for today's patrol, won't you?" Right, the patrol. Not even going to beat around the bush and pretend they're worried about him

"Yes. Go away!" They hesitated a little around him until Jason's already thin patience snapped "GET OUT!" he shot rubber bullets at them until they fled his apartment


	4. Ramona

Patrol. Something Jason hasn't done in over two weeks. Just walking up the stairs to his apartment was already killing him, he didn't want to think about actually going out on patrol. When Jason agreed to do this he was basically signing his death sentence. He wondered if maybe that wasn't the real reason he said yes in the first place. You know, so he could die as a hero on the field rather than die on a hospital bed as something that wasn't him. Every time he looked at the mirror he recognized even less the guy he sees on the other side. And that was just the beginning, his hair still had to fall out, he was going to get as thin as a stick, he would become a vegetable on top of a bed, and then it would finally be over. People would write on his gravestone that he was a 'warrior' and that he 'never gave up' and all that nice crap people only say to each other once one of them is dead.

Right now, though, all he had to do was kill some time while shooting Ramona's guys (and maybe even Ramona himself if he is lucky). He was glad Dick had warned him beforehand about this patrol, that gave Jason plenty of time to tamper with his gear so that he didn't give out that he was dying.

"Maybe tonight's the last time I see you, pal." He whispered to himself as he touched his reflection. All the padding he sewed on his jacket and the hood made him look like he used to. It was hard to stare at himself and not cringe. He shook his head and lifted the bag with the sniper rifle and walked out the window.

Okay, so maybe he should've arranged a meeting time with the replacement so he didn't die of boredom in this roof. He kept on swiping across the area with his rifle to make sure there was no one else there.

"Hood." Red Robin's voice came out on his comm. piece.

"Yeah?"

"Where are you?"

"Pier 19. Can't you see me on the radar?"

"No. Only your vitals show." Oh. Maybe he messed up with it a little. Jason blushed a little at the thought, but acted cool about it

"Well, you know where I am so get your ass here." Tim sighed

"And where exactly in pier 19 are you?"

"The furthest crane to the south. I'm on top of it."

"Are you sure that's the best place for you to choose as a sniping point? You'd get a whole wider vision field from warehouse fifteen."

' _But then I couldn't get up there, genius.'_ "Yeah, I'm goddamn sure this is the best place for me. Now get your feathery ass down here."

"My suit doesn't have feathers on it."

"Shut up condom head!"

"Make me, pimple head!" Jason shut the call on Tim and seethed as he went back to sniping out the place. A few minutes later he could see the tiny guy dressed in red and black jumping up the rooftops. He touched the comm. piece twice to signal he had Tim on his scope, and Tim swirled his bo-staff once to show he got the message.

"Something on your area, Reds?" Nightwing's voice came on both Tim and Jason's comm. pieces, and Jason groaned

"Please tell me that's not why you split us up like this."

"Maybe. So? Anything?"

"Still nothing." Jason saw movement on the furthest point on the left and held his breath. He zoomed in and saw a sniper aiming at Red Robin's head "Sniper!" He shouted and Tim jerked up and got in position. Jason took the sniper's startling as a chance to shoot a round on his head. The bastard fell unconscious to his knees "It's pier 19!"

"We'll be there in three minutes." Batman informed them and Jason wanted to point out how the hell would he get there in such a short time, but leave it to the Bat to break the laws of physics

"Hood! Get down here and help me!" Jason shot a few more thugs unconscious before pulling out his grapple gun and grappling to where Red Robin was. He almost let go of the gun from the force of the pull but managed to hold on to it. Jason and Tim fought with a decent synchrony and could hold their own until Batman and Nightwing got to where they were. In a bit over fifteen minutes they stood in a circle formation, waiting for the next horde of underpaid thugs they had to beat up.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tim saw a shadow moving and took off after it. Sure enough his suspicions paid off as it was Ramona and his new right hand man. He was almost catching up with them when he heard two guns going off and Ramona and his thug fell to the ground. Red Hood jogged to where he was

"Give us a heads up next time, you stupid bastard." He said whacking Tim on the head

"You give me a heads up the next time you shoot from behind me, asshole." He retorted, whacking Red Hood on the head and then massaging his hand as it stung from the hard helmet. Jason chucked and was about to say something when he saw movement and aimed his gun at Ramona

"You fucker better not move an inch, you hear me?"

"Why? You'll shoot me with rubber bullets?" Ramona's tough guy front would work if he wasn't trembling like a newborn fawn

"Mona, Mona, Mona. It seems that losing your pinky wasn't enough to teach you to respect me, was it?" Jason cocked his gun on Ramona's forehead

"You bats don't kill." The other thug said, a cocky smile on his face

"You're Mona's new guy, right?" Red Hood said turning to face him "Okay, greenhorn, once you're out of jail, google my name and you'll know what I'm capable of. You'll see what I'll do to you the next time you think about screwing with this town again." He shot both criminals on the head, knocking both unconscious

"I hope they won't forget it once they wake up." Jason straightened up and turned to face Bruce "You guys can wrap things up without me, right?" Batman nodded and Jason called his bike

"Hood, hold on." Nightwing said putting his hand on Jason's shoulder "Are you alright?"

"Why're you asking that?" Dick looked Jason up and down and shook his head. He didn't have any reason to be worried about Jason, but somehow when he's around him he gets a weird prick in his gut. Maybe he should write it off as the fear that might not ever go away that Jason might go on a rampage again

"No, it's… it's nothing. Thank you for today."

"Just stop breaking into my apartment and we'll be even." Dick could see the grin on Jason's face even with the helmet covering it

"Nah. Pissing you off is too good to give up just like that." Jason flipped him off and mounted his bike, speeding off without giving them a second glance

"I wonder if it will go away." Dick said to Bruce as they watched Red Robin talk to the police officers that answered their call. Even without Dick saying what 'it' was, Bruce knew. He looked at the moon, searching for the answer himself

"I'm not sure."


	5. The day after

Okay, so maybe patrolling was the stupidest, dumbest thing Jason had done since he found out he was sick. On the night of the patrol itself, he felt awesome, his blood pumping adrenalin all over his body, the feeling of doing something at last, it all felt as good as sex to him, maybe even better than sex. But on the next day, he felt like crap. Being beaten by a crowbar didn't feel as bad as he does now. The mere act of thinking made him want to throw up. The bucket he dragged to his bedside was disgusting, his muscles felt like they were ripped from the inside out, the few bruises he got from patrol hurt so bad he was going insane, and to make things worse, his cellphone had been ringing the whole morning, but he couldn't for the life of him move to answer it. So he just laid on his bed, accepting his fate as being the consequence of all the stupid decisions he made in his life.

The knocking on his door shook him out of his pity party. Half of him wanted to scream for help to whoever it was that was on his door, the other half of him wanted to just lay down and die. Jason's stupid pride made the decision for him, so he closed his eyes and tried to relax as he listened to the sounds of the city around him. He hummed slightly at the sound of the cars, the always present screeching of sirens, the sound of his front door opening, the clicking of heels on his tiled floor…

With a gasp, Jason sat up on his bed, the sudden act making his stomach do a barrel roll inside him, he reached the bucket beside him and filled it once more with his stomach contents, the disgusting sounds coming from him making his stomach churn even more

"Jason?" he heard a woman calling him from the doorway, he reached for his gun, hating the fact that the bullets packed there wouldn't kill their target. He was almost pulling the trigger when his eyes focused on the other occupant in the room, a few moments later he recognized her as Cassidy, the oncologist that was taking care of him. The woman was terrified, she held her hands up, her knees trembling under her, and only once Jason dropped the gun on the bed she let her hands fall to her side and leaned back on the wall behind her, struggling to catch her breath. "You weren't answering your phone. I came to check up on you."

When Jason didn't say anything back, she opened her eyes, and saw he had passed out. She hesitantly approached him, and it didn't take a doctor to see he wasn't fine. She put the back of her hand on his forehead, and frowned at the temperature, but it wasn't until she checked for his pulse that she started panicking, it was dangerously weak. "Jason! Wake up! Wake up, you hear me?!" She took out her cellphone and dialed 911 "This is Doctor Caroline Cassidy, I need you to send an ambulance to the Crime Alley right now. There's a man having a seizure. He's in his early twenties, his pulse is weak and there are multiple bruises on his body. He also has AML, so I need you to send the ambulance right now! Crime Alley, on the fourth floor." She sighed once she heard the ambulance was five minutes away, and went back to waking Jason up. She walked into the bathroom and wet a piece of cloth she found, wringed it and went back to Jason "Jason, it's Cassidy. You need to wake up." She whispered as she ran the cloth on the back of his neck, trying to bring down his temperature even just a bit "Help is on the way, you hear me? I need you to wake up and tell me what happened." She kept whispering nonsense to him, trying to wake him up, she was so focused on what she was doing she jumped a little when the paramedics came rushing to the room. She backed down a few steps, giving the men plenty of space. They strapped Jason to the stretcher and rushed out of the apartment, Cassidy right on their heels

"Is he going to be okay?" she couldn't help but ask

"His condition isn't stable enough for us to give you an answer. We're heading for Gotham Hospital right now, you can join in the back of the ambulance if you are feeling well enough." She didn't quite get it when the paramedic implied she wasn't feeling alright, until she noticed the wetness on her cheeks. She hadn't realized she was crying , which was a weird thing, seeing as she didn't know Jason well enough to cry for him. She rubbed her hands on her face, getting rid of the tears, and nodded to herself "Ma'am, are you coming or not?" The man asked once they had safely secured Jason on the ambulance.

"I'm coming." She said and entered the back of the ambulance

She nervously watched as the paramedics did their best to stabilize Jason's condition, she bit her knuckles to stop herself from jumping in and helping, emergency cases were not her specialty.

"Ma'am, the call said the patient has AML, is he undergoing chemotherapy?"

"Yes, his first session was yesterday."

"What were the drugs used on him?"

"Cytosine arabinoside, idarubicin and mitoxantrone." The paramedic nodded and the driver of the ambulance, who in turn passed the information on the radio to who Cassidy could only assume was a nurse at the hospital

It didn't take long at all for them to reach Gotham Hospital, there was an entire team waiting for them, but unfortunately they didn't let Cassidy come beyond the emergency room, even though she was the one responsible for Jason's treatment, since it was her day off

"Caroline!" She heard someone calling her, and saw Dr. Geller jogging to where she was "I heard you called an ambulance."

"Do you remember the guy that came here last week, that you called me to help you?"

"Yeah, I do. Jason, right? What about him?"

"Turned out he indeed had cancer." The doctor just nodded, he'd heard this kind of news far too many times to be shocked by it now "I went to his place to check up on him, found him almost dying."

"Do you think it's because of his chemo?"

"That might be one of the reasons, but he was littered with bruises, I think he got into a bar fight or something." Geller nodded again

"Are you going to stay here?" He asked her

"I think I'll go back to his apartment, pick him a change of clothes and lock his apartment. It's going to be wiped clean if I don't do that."

"Okay, I'll hit you up if there's any news on his condition."

"Thank you, John." She waved at him and called a taxi

"No problem." He gave her a kind smile as he waved back

* * *

The first thing Jason noticed was that he wasn't dead. He had mixed feelings for that, he didn't want to die alone like that again, but he also didn't want to be pitied by the bats, because the simple fact of him not being dead meant that one of those creeps sneaked into his apartment and found him almost dying, and then found out he had cancer and squealed to all the others, because none of them knew how to keep their mouths shut.

The second thing Jason noticed was that he wasn't in the Batcave, no, it was too bright for that. They might've taken him to Leslie's. He was cool with that, the old woman was always kind to him despite all he's done to them, but he didn't like how she waited for him to sleep before poking him with needles. He focused on his hearing, and when he didn't hear the sound of the doctor's steps, he opened his eyes, ready to take off any needle that was stuck on him. When he opened his eyes, he quickly took off the IV that was poking his left arm, and half expected either Dick or Bruce to come out of wherever they were and telling him off for taking off his needle before sticking the damn thing on him, like he'd seen them doing many times to either Damian or Tim. With a better look at his surroundings, he noticed the familiar design of his room. It wasn't like Leslie's clinic. It wasn't like the Wayne Manor either. It was like Gotham Hospital, the same place he was taken to a week ago. Bruce doesn't treat their bruises from patrol at hospitals, that's why the Batcave has more medical machines than most hospitals do.

The third thing Jason noticed was that the Batman didn't save him. Again

* * *

 _ **I am not familiar at all with the whole process of an emergency situation such as the one written here, so please tell me if there are any mistakes in the way I portrayed it. Also, the chemo drugs I wrote in here are the ones that came out on a Google search, they are most definitely not the drugs that are used on a first session of a chemotherapy treatment. If you happen to know which ones are the right ones, please tell me. I hope you enjoyed this chapter :)**_


	6. Cat's out the bag

Cassidy sighed in frustration. She had hoped to get in Jason's apartment, throw a few of his clothes in a bag and then get out. It would take five minutes at most.

But of course things never go the way they're supposed to. She couldn't find any piece of clothing that wasn't dirty. She supposed that was what she should expect, considering the dude's life just crumbled in the past week. She sighed again, but this time she went to gather his clothes that were thrown around the room and threw them at the washing machine (which she was surprised he had one, judging from what she knew of his lifestyle). She took out her phone and called Dr. Geller

"Hey John, it's Cassidy. Have you got any information on Jason?"

"Yes, they've ran a CT scan on him, he's got internal bleeding on his abdomen." He wondered if it was okay to continue when she didn't say anything "Are you okay?"

"Yes. Yes, I am. I considered internal bleeding when I saw the bruises on him, but it's still hard to listen to it. Have they decided how to continue the treatment?"

"They're giving him anticoagulant reversal agents and leaving him on strict observation, any minimal changes on his condition and they'll revise the treatment."

"Good. I'm going to take longer than I thought, he didn't have any clean clothes, I need to wait for his clothes to finish washing."

"Why don't you just buy him new ones?" He chuckled when she didn't say anything back "You didn't think of that, did you?"

"Shut up, I'll be there in thirty minutes." She cut of the call before she got any more annoyed at him laughing at her.

She walked into Jason's room to find her purse. She was getting out of the room when she heard someone was on the living room

"Honestly Jason, you can't complain we sneak into your apartment if you're going to leave the front door unlocked." She heard a man say. She ran to the bed and grabbed the gun Jason had pointed at her that morning "Jason? Are you here?" She heard the man getting closer to the bedroom, and pointed the gun to the door

"Stay right where you are!" She shouted at him. The man took a while to realize what was happening, and once he did he put both hands in the air. He looked around and nodded at himself

"JASON!" He shouted but once he didn't hear any response his eyes flicked madly around the room, like he was analyzing it "Where's my brother?!" He glared at Cassidy and moved closer to her. Her hands trembled, but she didn't shoot. The man got closer to her and took the gun out of her hands then folded his arms, waiting for an answer. Just then his words registered in her brain

"Wait, you're Jason's brother?!" The man's dark hair and blue eyes didn't leave out much doubt, and she was sure she had seen him before on the TV

"Yeah, and who the hell are you? I'm gonna call the cops!" He took out his phone, but Cassidy put her hand over the device

"Wait, wait, wait! I'm no one suspicious!" The man just lifted his eyebrow at her "Sure, I mean, it's suspicious that I'm here and Jason's not, and now you're here, and you don't know me… I mean, why would you, right? People usually don't talk about their doctors…" She was going to continue her mindless rambling when the man put a hand on her shoulder

"Doctor? What do you mean?" She tilted her head to the side, there was no other specialty that came to mind when it was about someone with cancer

"I'm Jason's oncologist. I came to check on him since yesterday was his first session of chemotherapy, found him having a seizure." She panicked when the man's eyes widened and he stumbled a bit, but she guided him to sit on the bed "B-But I called an ambulance and they are treating him right now." The man rested his face on his hands, and she left to fetch him a glass of water "Here. Try to calm down. " He took a deep breath and sipped on the water before putting it away on the nightstand

"What does he have?"

"The doctors that are taking care of him have diagnosed an internal bleeding on his abdomen. Internal bleeding is more dangerous on patients like him that have difficulty with coagulation, but he's being given the right medication, his condition will stabilize." She realized what she implied and was going to mend what she said when the man sighed

"Leukemia, huh." He shook his head as he let out a dry laugh "I would find it easier to accept if that idiot had a brain tumor, would explain a lot of things." He shook his head again as he stood up "Which hospital is he?"

"Gotham Hospital." Cassidy felt like crap for taking Jason's chance to tell his brother. He probably wanted to tell him in a softer way "If you wait for me to buy him a change of clothes I can go with you." Cassidy took her purse and turned to the door "You can wait here, I'll be back soon."

"I'll come with you." She frowned and looked him up and down

"Are you sure you're alright?" It was his turn to frown then. He had perfect control over his emotions, thanks to Bruce's training. He looked down and saw his hands were shaking. He hid them on his pants' pockets and gave her a fake smile

"Yeah, I'm fine."

The woman wanted to say something, but chose not to

* * *

Jason was trying to figure out who had saved him, but he couldn't even come up with theories. He had a feeling in his gut that he had seen whoever it was before he passed out, but his mind was too fuzzy for that. He cussed again at the IV that was dripping on the floor. He wanted to be out of there, but his body was too full with drugs for him to even move. His eyes flickered to the door when it opened, and he saw a man he sort of recognized, but couldn't say who he was. He imagined he was the doctor that he saw last week when he passed out, but he didn't remember his name. The doctor groaned in frustration

"You need to stop doing this every time we put you on IV!" He admonished Jason and pressed the button to call the nurse. A nurse appeared on the doorway after a few seconds, and the doctor turned to face her. "I need a new needle and a tube for the IV for him." She nodded and went to gather what the doctor asked

"I forgot your name." Jason said to the doctor. His voice was so raspy, he touched his throat, it hurt a little

"I'm Doctor John Geller. You're a little dehydrated from throwing up." Jason looked around, but there wasn't any jar of water for him

"Well, get me water, then."

"I'm sorry, Jason, but we can't give you anything to drink or eat as long as we don't know whether or not you'll undergo surgery."

"Surgery? Why? I'm feeling peachy."

The doctor pretended he didn't hear what Jason said "You had internal bleeding, which we believe was caused by the bruises on your torso. We are giving you anticoagulant reversal agents, but if there are any changes in your condition we will need to perform a surgery to manually seal the bleeding point." His face got a stern tone "Which is why we need you to keep the IV on your arm. Can I trust you, or will I have to restrain your arms to the bed?"

Jason smirked "I don't swing that way."

"I'm serious, Jason. This is a life-threatening situation."

"Everything's life-threatening now, doc." He sighed "Okay, okay. I won't take it out. I'm not that excited to drop dead yet." Doctor Geller was about to say something when the nurse came back with the new needle and IV tube. He took out the old tube and gave it to her to discard it

"Do you want her to hold your hand?" He smirked at Jason, who flipped him off. He quickly secured the needle, and checked to see if the IV was working properly

"Hey, do you know who saved me?" Jason asked the doctor as he worked

"Doctor Cassidy. Do you remember her?" Jason nodded. Geller chuckled a little "She was so freaked out. I haven't seen her showing as much emotions since…" He stopped himself from speaking

"What?" The doctor debated internally whether or not to tell him, but decided to at least entertain the man for a while

"There was this friend of ours, Matt. He was a professional at getting under Cassidy's skin, just like you." He chuckled once more as he got a little nostalgic

"He died?" The doctor looked at him surprised "You keep talking about him on the past. He was Cassidy's boyfriend or something?"

"I'm not going to go near that part." He checked his watch "She will be here soon, you can ask her these questions." He stopped to think "Actually, don't ask her anything, she'd kill me if she thought I'm going around telling people about her life." Jason watched the doctor's retreating form and turned to the window beside him as a new source of entertainment

* * *

Cassidy stared at the face of the man who claims to be her patient's brother. Besides the color of their eyes and hair, there was nothing about the two men that said they were related. The gentleman who held open the doors for her and insisted on holding all her bags couldn't possibly share the same DNA as the man who takes every chance he has to tick her off, the man who can't spend even five minutes without sexually harassing her with his sarcastic comments…

"Is there something on my face?" She came back to reality and blushed furiously when she saw she'd been completely staring him

"S-Sorry. I was just thinking how you and Jason only have your looks in common. You two don't act the same at all."

He chuckled "I don't think there's anyone else in this world that acts like Jason."

"That's true." She laughed

"How… how bad is it?"

"I know as much as you about his state right now, but if no one's called me yet that means he hasn't gotten worse." The yet was implied

"Not that. The… cancer." The bitter tasting word on his mouth made the man realize how real all of this was

"I can't tell you without the patient's permission." She thought he would get angry at her and demand an answer, but the man just gave her a sad half smile and sighed, tightening his grip on the steering wheel "I'm sorry." He raised a brow and glanced at her sideways

"Don't be. You're just doing your job." The GPS signaled they were about two miles from their destination "It isn't hard to understand why Jason wouldn't tell us, given our history."

"What do you mean?" The man mentally slapped himself in the head for letting it slip

"I mean, he did feel so trapped in the Manor he thought his only way out was to fake his death." He quickly handed out the story they fed to the media, hating every single word of it, and hating Bruce even more for making it up

"Oh." She didn't keep up with the news as much as she should, but the Wayne heir's fake death was the news of the year last year "I think you're wrong, actually. He didn't tell you because he didn't want you to worry about him." The man wanted to laugh at the doctor's naivety, but got himself wishing what she said was the truth

Fortunately for both occupants of the car, the hospital came into their sight, mercifully releasing them from the awkward conversation. They kept silent on their way to Jason's room.

The man hesitated once they reached the room, his hand frozen on the door handle. He was really hoping this was all a big bad tasted prank Jason thought was funny. He wished he would open this door and a camera crew would come out, saying it was a prank show. What if when he opened this door he really found his brother fighting a deadly disease? What would he tell the others? Bruce hadn't even finished healing from the first time Jason died, who knew how he would get if he knew about this? And what about Alfred? The poor old man has gone through so much with this family, are they really going to put him up to taking care of a sick Jason? He gathered all his courage and opened the door really quickly, just like ripping off a huge Band-Aid.

The first thing he saw was a bed. Jason was laying on top of it. The second thing he saw were the many tubes and wires coming from under the blanket placed on top of his brother. The third thing he saw was the horror etched on Jason's face. The succession from horror to confusion then anger was so quick anyone else would've missed it, but he didn't miss it. He saw it crystal clear

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" Was the raspy roar that greeted him. Jason then doubled up, coughing out the pain in his throat, clutching his abdomen where a white hot pain took all over him from the sudden stress he was putting his body up to

"Hey, hey, Jason, calm down, it's your brother. Aren't you recognizing him?" Cassidy rushed to Jason's aid, wishing she could do something to help, but the most she could do was rub his back, offering him some comfort

"I know who he is. What're you doing here?" He grunted, turning his face to see his brother

"I went to your place, met her, she brought me here." The man replied curtly, taking a seat beside the hospital bed

"Glad you didn't miss the show, then." Jason laid back down, his breath labored "Now you can go back and spread the word to all your family: "The freak's finally going away!". Just don't forget my invitation for the party you people will throw in celebration."

The man gripped his own hands so tightly he had to let go once his grip got to the point he would break them if he kept it. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and lifted his face to look at Jason

"I know you like to say hurtful things when you're in pain, but you're going too far, Jason."

"Well, go away, then." The man shook his head and straightened his back on the chair

"I won't."

"Suit yourself. I'll just call security and they'll take care of you." The man shook his head again

"You won't. That would bring you too much attention. If you wanted us to know about your situation, we would know of it by now."

"Just go away, dammit!" Jason was losing what little patience he had

"Make me." The man crossed his arms and glared at Jason, daring him to touch him

"Really?! How old are you? Four?!" The man kept glaring at Jason "Just do whatever the fuck you want. I'm too tired for this shit."

"Do the two of you not get along?" Cassidy asked as she finished checking the drugs they put Jason in

"It's complicated." The brothers answered with a synchrony worthy of identic twins

* * *

 _ **Let's see if you can find out who the brother is XD**_

 _ **Special thanks to rpglady76 and Robin0203 for the idea of how to introduce the other batboys to Jason's drama. I had other plans, but yours was better!**_


	7. Be there for him

_**WARNING! The beginning of the chapter has some DARK and sort of GRAPHIC scenes. If the thematic of this story is a sensitive topic for you, I suggest you skip these parts.**_

 _ **The characters' opinions do not reflect my own**_

* * *

" _Do the two of you not get along?" Cassidy asked as she finished checking the drugs they put Jason in_

" _It's complicated." The brothers answered with a synchrony worthy of identic twins_

* * *

Cassidy nodded and settled herself on the edge of Jason's bed. She rattled her brain, trying to come up with something to talk that wouldn't end in an awkward silence, but couldn't come up with anything. She stood up and stretched her back.

"I'm going to go get me some tea. Do you want some as well?" She asked Jason's brother

"Uh, some coffee would be nice. Black, please." The doctor nodded and walked to the door

"Hey, what about me?!" Jason asked indignantly "Bring me water!" He demanded before she was out the room

"No." She said as she closed the door

"Why not?" Jason's brother asked him

"They think I might go into surgery." Jason sighed "This is so stupid." He turned to face the other occupant of the room "What're you gonna do?"

"Nothing. For now, at least. How long has it been since you were diagnosed?"

"Last week."

"Were you planning on telling us?" Jason barked out a dry laugh

"I was planning on disappearing and you people never knowing I died."

"You're not going to die."

"Oh, really?! Why's that? You've had the cure of cancer with you this whole time? Not that it would be any surprise to me! The great Tim Drake, the one guy that's more intelligent than the Batman himself! Face the facts, kid, this isn't some freaking cold, this is cancer! It's my body deciding I'm not worthy of living and killing itself from the inside out!" As he yelled at Tim, Jason's hand kept twisting the fabric of the hospital gown in his stomach "Stop telling me your pretty, cliché bullshit and go fu…" He grunted and forced down the liquid that came up his throat, but mentally groaned at the metallic taste, that was not a good sign

"Hey, Jason! What's wrong?!" Tim jumped out of his chair and was at his brother's side in an instant

"Go… away…" he grunted and blacked out, not before spilling his stomach's contents, which consisted mostly of blood

Tim stepped out of the way of the vomit, his eyes widening when he saw the red.

"Jason! Wake up! Come on!" He shook his brother vigorously, panicking when he didn't make any move. He sprinted to the hallway "HELP! Someone!"

A male doctor came rushing to him, he looked like he was already heading to the room even before Tim screamed for help. The doctor didn't even spare him a glance, already working on his patient. Tim got out of the room, he felt his blood pressure dropping to a point he would be the next one needing medical care if he stood in that room any longer. He saw through a fuzzy mind that the woman he came with –the annoying part of his brain reminded him her name was Cassidy, but he couldn't care less about that- rushing to the room, working with the other doctor. Soon enough, a team of three nurses came into the room, not long after he saw his brother being taken away from the room on a stretcher. He knew he had to go after them, but even with an IQ of 142, his brain couldn't find where his legs were, much less figure out how they work. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and saw Cassidy was telling him something, but his ears were ringing, he couldn't make out a single word she said. He held up his hand, telling her to stop talking. She frowned, but then nodded and rushed off somewhere. Less than a minute later, she came back, short breathed, with a can of Coke on her hands. She opened the can and held it up to his lips. He shook his head, he wasn't going to put this poison on his body, as he liked to call the sweet beverage. The woman stood firm, the can positioned on his lips, Tim saw he had no other choice than to drink the stupid thing. After about ten minutes, Tim rested his head on the wall behind him, glad his mind was clearing up. The woman checked something in his eyes, and the trembling on his hands, and seemed pleased with herself.

"Can you hear me now?" She asked quietly. Tim nodded "Your sugar level dropped, that's why I forced the soda on you." _'That makes sense.'_ , Tim thought

"Where did they take Jason?" Cassidy wasn't sure she should tell him anything just yet, but the look on his eyes told her he was going to turn this hospital upside down until he found his brother. She put a hand on his shoulder as he was getting up, a silent order for him to calm down

"He's being prepared to go into surgery as we speak."

"Is it because I'm here?" The doctor took a few moments to understand what he meant

"Oh, no, no. I mean, him getting agitated might have made things worse than they were, but the bleeding on his abdomen was getting worse anyway."

"I should've gone away when he first told me to." She sighed and sat down on the plastic chair beside him. She cursed at how hard the thing was, considering how much money this hospital makes, one would consider they would invest a little more on chairs. She took off her heels, making a silent promise to throw the damn things on her fireplace in retaliation to the many blisters the shoes made on her feet that day. She sighed again and tried to relax on the chair, closing her eyes as she did so.

"You know, I'm well familiar with having people dear to me dealing with cancer." She opened one eye after she spoke after a few minutes, checking if she wasn't talking to herself. Satisfied that Tim was still there, she went on "When I was a kid, my dad got diagnosed with lung cancer. I was really small, like eight years or so, so I didn't get to accompany much of his battle with cancer. But I still remember how hard it was for my mom, to get up at five to go to work, get home at three and rush to the hospital so she could take care of my dad, then come home at one in the morning and sleep a couple of hours and then do it all over again. I lost the count of how many times I saw either my mom or my sister crying over what was going on with our family, but they never left my dad's side. Eight years old me couldn't understand why they didn't. That is, until they took me to see him, I think it was about a month before he died, and I saw how happy my dad was at seeing me. My mom was sleeping on the chair beside him, and the doctor had called my sister outside to talk to her about some medical bullshit, so it was basically just me and dad. I was terrified to go near him, that man didn't look at all like my dad. He smiled at me, and told me that my mom and my sis would talk to him the entire time they stayed with him, they would tell him about me, they would gossip about the neighbors, tell him that my aunt's cat got pregnant again and didn't know what to do of the kittens. I remember that I wanted to ask him how he was doing, if he was hurting somewhere, but I didn't get the chance to touch on those subjects, since my dad rambled and rambled. I might've got that from him, because, I'm making you listen to this pointless conversation that's probably boring you out of your mind." She chuckled quietly when Tim didn't make any move to tell her she wasn't boring him "My point is, you need to stay by your brother's side. Even when he yells and screams at you to go away, when he throws things at you and calls you every bad name you can think of. He needs you, he needs someone to be there with him. " Then, she added as an afterthought "Just take his gun away, so he doesn't kill you."

"Those are rubber bullets." Tim replied chuckling

"Really?!"

"Yeah. He shoots us with those things every chance he gets." Cassidy hummed quietly in response, and for the first time that day, there was confortable silence around her

They stayed like that for a few minutes before Tim stood up and straightened himself

"When are visiting hours done?" He asked the doctor

"For patients like Jason, family can visit at any hour." Tim nodded

"Good. I'm going to go home and take a shower before coming back. Do you want a ride home?" Cassidy nodded. Never before in her whole life had she wanted to be home as much as she did then. She pondered whether to put her heels back on, but decided not to. She jumped up from the chair and offered a hand for Tim. Deep inside, Tim felt somewhat offended that someone was offering him help to get up from a chair, but he still took her hand, not wanting to be rude.

* * *

The comfortable silence accompanied the pair on their ride home, only being cut by Cassidy telling him the directions to her apartment. They hummed together the lyrics to the songs that played on the radio, neither noticing they were doing it, since they were focusing on their own thoughts. Once they reached Cassidy's, they quickly bid each other goodbye, Tim waited for her to go inside before driving off. He got to his apartment and showered in record time, gathered his laptop and cell phone before going out again.

He quickly dropped by Jason's to check if there was anything he needed to do there, and frowned as he saw the lights on. He knew it wasn't a burglary, seeing as burglars usually don't light the place they're robbing up. That meant it was either Dick or Bruce, seeing as Alfred was too busy keeping track of an injured Damian. He really hoped it was Dick, even with all his annoyingness.

He quickly made up a reasonable explanation to why he was at Jason's and that also explained the apartment owner's absence. He kept his face natural as he jogged up the stairs. He face palmed as he opened the front door to find Dick crouching on the ground, his shoes on his hand as he pressed them on the wall, right under the windows. He had attacked all other windows Tim could see, the only ones left were the one Dick was working on and the one on the kitchen over the sink (because there was no space to leave footprints on it).

"Wow, you really go out of your way to annoy Jason." He commented. Dick didn't jump of surprise, because of course he knew Tim was there. Dick turned to face him and shot him a mischievous smile

"Yup!" He smiled as if it was a compliment "But he deserves it this time." Tim raised a brow, wondering what Dick meant "He filled my Nightwing suit with itching powder, and swapped my batons for rubber ones. It was sooo annoying to have the goons laugh at the squeaking sound the batons made when I hit them, and I had to use my old uniform, the 'disco' one, remember? Man, why did I thought that was a cool look back then?" Tim laughed nervously. It was actually him and Damian that had done this prank on Dick in retaliation for him eating all of Alfred's cookies. He decided he would let Jason take the fall for this one

"So, to pay him back you're putting footprints on his walls?"

"Not just that, my dear Timbo. Look on the kitchen!" Tim looked to the kitchen and made a face at Dick that said 'I can see it from here, and there's nothing especial.' "Nooo, I mean look on the kitchen, not _at the kitchen_!" Tim sighed and walked to the kitchen before opening one of the cupboards. A lot of cans of soda of all different flavors came crashing at him, and Tim was sort of glad it was him that opened it and not Jason. Inside his head, he was feeling as though Jason had suddenly become a too fragile creature, as if anything could break him now

"Now you're going to have to redo this, you know?" Dick waved him dismissively

"Nah, I've got the other spaces covered."

"Did you do it everywhere on the kitchen?"

"Yup!" Dick was so proud of himself

"I don't think I've ever witnessed such a huge waste of energy and time."

"Well, let's see if you can keep saying that once you see the other things I did!" Tim groaned as Dick pulled him to Jason's bathroom. It was a downright mess. The toilet was clogged, the floor was a wet mess, with an army of squeaking duck toys that had fell off of the bathtub, which was overflowing with the annoying toys, and there was the word 'REVENGE!' written on the walls with toothpaste, along Nightwing's signature bird. "So? What do you think? Genius, huh?" Dick wasn't the best prankster. His pranks were usually childish and not that much creative. They were more annoying than funny. But his eyes were gleaming so brightly Tim didn't have the heart to tell him off

"You sure worked hard." He gave him an awkward laugh. How come Dick managed to do this much in the less than five hours since Tim had been there this afternoon? This should take a whole day to be done

"Yeah! And, the best part, I put itching powder on his bed sheets, his underwear, _and_ his Red Hood uniform! But, since I'm not heartless enough to let him patrol on an itching suit, I left him my first Robin uniform, completely remodeled to fit a man his size!" Dick cackled manically "I'm going to be sitting right _there-_ " he pointed to the old couch "-with my feet on the coffee table-" one of Jason's biggest pet peeves "- as I watch him suffer in revenge for what he did to me!" Tim winced. Dick was really mad about the prank. He was so glad he thought it was Jason. Tim could make the apartment go back to its original state before Jason was discharged from the hospital

"Well, too bad for you, Jason won't be in town for a while." Dick's face fell so hard one might think his puppy died or something

"Wait, what?! _No!_ Why?!"

"He didn't tell me."

"Aww, man!" Dick pouted and threw himself on the old couch. The thing finally crashed, right in the middle where Dick had thrown all his weight on. Tim blanched and Dick lifted both arms in celebration "Yaaass! I finally broke it!"

"What're you celebrating for?! You know how much Jason loves this couch! He'll kill you! And me! And maybe go into a rampage and kill another dozen people before Bruce catches him!"

"Nah, he won't care that much once I buy him a new one!" Dick got up and watched his artwork "We made a bet that if I managed to break this junk I could buy him a new one and he had to take it. Man, I've been trying to break this thing for _months_!" He nudged the couch with his foot and the thing fell apart even further

"That doesn't matter, you _idiot_! This couch was like a security blanket or something for him! I would go into hiding if I was you!" Tim turned the couch upside down and checked if he could fix it. The thing was so disgusting he felt shivers running down his spine, even touching the wood sent down a small rain of wood powder and dust. He decided facing Jason's wrath was more worth it than touching this couch even one more time. He felt his blood running cold at the thought that he sat on the thing so many times before

"Great." He pointed a finger at Dick "You're going to go and buy a new couch first thing tomorrow, hear me?! We need to fix this before Jason comes back."

"Why're you so pissy about this?" Dick asked cocking his head to the side. Tim cussed softly and ditched his original story, going for a new one that suited the occasion better. He sighed softly, getting into character

"He blackmailed me into watching his place while he was away. He knew you would try something because of the prank he pulled on you. If he finds the place like this he'll…" he waited a few moments, acting as if he held his tongue right on time "Nevermind."

"What?" Dick smiled curiously, his interest piqued

"Oh, I'm not going to tell you."

"Aw, come on! Tell me!"

"No!"

"You know I'll find out one way or another! Come on! Tell me!" Dick kept nudging Tim with his fingertips

"Goddammit, you're annoying! Go away! Okay, okay! I'll tell you! Just get away from me!" Dick backed down two steps, but still hovered around Tim, wiggling his fingers in a way that made Tim want to punch him "He got his hands on an old video from the batcave from when I had just became Robin and I had put on the Batsuit and was messing around with it until Alfred found me and scolded me." Tim's face got really red, not because he was that good of an actor (which he was), but because he was really revealing one of his biggest blackmail material, something Bruce used on him when he wanted Tim to do something he doesn't want to. Tim was pretty sure Jason has that video too, but he hasn't used that one on him yet.

Dick's face got a blank, shocked expression, his mouth was open and he had to remind himself to close it. He quickly straightened himself up and turned to the door. Before he turned around, Tim could see Dick was biting the inside of his lip to keep from laughing out

"I remembered I have something to do." He said in a fake monotonous voice and sprinted to the door. Tim quickly launched himself at Dick, in a half-baked attempt at stopping him

"Wait! Dick! Don't you dare!" He ran after him down the stairs, and when he got outside Dick was already inside his own car, bringing the silver Tesla to life. Tim banged on the window and tried opening the door, already knowing it would be locked "You tell the demon and I'll murder you!" he gave Dick the bird as the man put his head outside his window and shouted at him 'Bye Timmy, love you!'

Tim sighed tiredly. It might have cost his dignity, but at least one of the biggest problems was taken care of, for a while

* * *

 _ **Yay! Congrats to rpglady76 and Princess Of Flames for figuring out who the brother was!**_


	8. Don't be stupid

Tim sighed as he threw himself on Jason's bed. It took him most of the night to clean up Dick's mess. He shuddered as he thought back to the rat skeleton that was inside the old disgusting couch when he went to dismantle it. He turned his head to read the labels of the drugs Jason was taking, since he found them hidden inside one of Jason's boots and hadn't yet figured a better hiding place that wasn't as disgusting.

He took out his laptop from inside his bag on the kitchen counter, and researched about them. He frowned at most of the side effects: _dizziness, lack of energy, loss of appetite, seizures._ As far as he knew, Jason hadn't yet developed these, but it would be good to keep them in mind in case he started showing these signs, so Tim wouldn't freak out.

* * *

He tsked at the hour, it was almost two in the morning, he must've had fallen asleep. He quickly gathered his things and got out of the apartment. Tim used every red traffic light as a small time to gather his thoughts together. He was dreading getting to a decision on the matter, but in the back of his mind he already knew what he was going to do, as stupid as that decision was. He wouldn't have let one of his biggest blackmail videos out in the open if he still had any doubt about what he was going to do.

As soon as he got to the counter to check in on Jason, a doctor approached him. The man looked like he had been waiting for him.

"Mister Drake?" He called out to Tim, who in turn had a careful expression on. It took him a few moments to remember this as the doctor who rushed in to help take care of Jason.

"Yes, it's me." Tim shook the offered hand

"I'm doctor John Geller, I was the surgeon who operated on your brother." That quickly got Tim's attention, who nodded for him to continue. "As you might have already heard, Jason had internal bleeding. Usually, we wait for it to solve on its own, but it wasn't the case with him, so we rushed into surgery. The surgery went well, we located the source of the bleeding, it was a minor tear on an abdominal vein. You'll be able to go see him as soon as he wakes up, if he's willing to have any visitors. If you leave your contact with one of the receptionists, we will call you as soon as he wakes up."

"No, there's no need for that, I'll just wait in the waiting room." Geller nodded

"Also, there's another matter I want to talk to you about. Jason doesn't have anyone listed as his power of attorney, and since legally he doesn't have any bonds to you or your family, all decisions involving his course of treatment for the time he's not conscious or mentally stable will be done by the team of doctors responsible for his treatment. So, you might want to have a talk with him about that matter, see if that's really what he wants, just to be safe."

Tim nodded. "Thank you, I'll talk with him." The doctor then excused himself, saying he had another surgery in a while. Tim slumped in one of the chairs, he was exhausted. He was about to doze off when his cellphone rang. He wanted to cry -36 hours of no sleep do that to a man-, but still, he answered the damn thing.

"It better be worth it." He grumbled to himself and hit the answer button with such force one might have thought the device did something personal to him "Hello." He answered in a gruff voice

"Tim." An even gruffer voice answered back

"What do you want, Bruce?"

"I need your report about Ramona. Where is it?"

"Does it have to be now?" Tim whined

"Yes." Tim huffed and took out his laptop and sent him the report. He heard the beep coming from the Batcomputer that he received the file

"There. Happy now?"

"Satisfied." Tim snorted. When is the man ever happy? "How long since you last slept?"

"About 36 hours." Tim yawned

"You should get some sleep."

He wanted to point out he was about to do so but Bruce got in the way of that, but settled for a "Yeah."

Tim was just about to cut the call when he heard Bruce saying Jason's name

"What did you say? I didn't hear it."

"I asked if you know where Jason is. I can't track him."

"Dick didn't tell you? Jason took off somewhere, left me in charge of his place. Why do you want to find him? You're not expecting a report from _Jason_ , are you?"

Bruce snorted "Of course not. I was just curious, that's all."

"You know, you're allowed to admit you care about him."

"I don't." Came the brisk reply and Bruce cut off the call. Tim flinched. He was so glad Jason didn't listen to this conversation, or he might just go back to his old ways

* * *

"… Mr. Drake? Mr. Drake?" Tim jumped from his seat, totally disoriented, scaring the crap out of the poor nurse that woke him up. He figured out where he was, and calmed down a little. He ran a hand down his face, trying to will himself to be awake. He felt he was more tired than before he went to sleep, thanks to the hospital's hard chairs.

"Sorry." The smile he gave the woman was like a growl compared to his usual charming smile, but it still did the trick with her, she seemingly was past the scare he gave her. "Do you need something from me?"

"Yes. Mister Todd is awake, he said you can go see him. I'll show you to the room."

Tim hurriedly gathered his things and followed her to Jason's room. When he got there, the lady doctor from before was also there, sharing a cup of jello with Jason. She stopped laughing when she saw Tim had arrived. She got up from the bedside chair and took the finished jello with her

"You two have a lot to catch up on. I'll leave you two to yourselves." Cassidy quickly greeted Tim and headed to the door, but turned before leaving "Remember what I told you, Jason." She didn't stay long enough for her to hear Jason's reply, she trusted him

"What did she tell you?" Tim thought he must've chosen the worst icebreaker of all times when Jason took a couple minutes to even acknowledge his existence

"She told me to at least listen to what you have to say."

"Okay." Tim groaned as he sat down on the chair, his back protesting at the action

"Wow, you look like crap." Jason commented, and Tim chuckled

"I feel like crap too."

The two of them stayed in silence, none of them wanting to pop the metaphorical balloon and turn the awkward silence into maddening anger

"Okay." Jason announced and tried to prop himself further on the bed, the incision from the surgery not agreeing to the action, but he propped himself up anyway. Tim reached out to help, but Jason stopped him, he could damn well sit up on his damn bed." I'll give you the right to ask me ten questions, to which I'll answer honestly. Then I'll ask you my questions, you'll answer them honestly, and then you'll go out to live your own life and leave me _the fuck alone_. Those are my terms. Don't like, leave. Got it?" Tim nodded. He liked those terms

"Okay. First question: When did you find out?"

"About a week and a half ago. Next." Tim nodded. It hasn't been that long

"How bad is it?"

"Bad. Like, five years survival rate bad." Tim's guts went cold at that. It was getting too real now. He swallowed some saliva, as if that would help unclog the metaphorical lump that was stuck in his throat. Jason watched his brother's reaction to the time he has left with detached amusement. It made him sadistically satisfied to see the man who took every chance he had to rub it in his face he was better than Jason would ever be in every way possible have such a dumb expression plastered on his face. Another part of him was angry at the thought that Tim was feeling like that _because of him_ , as if he had any thought about Jason that was even remotely positive enough for him to feel his death in such a way. A smaller part of him was happy at the thought that someone would miss him once he was gone.

"Hey." He called Tim out of his musings "Your next question?"

"R-Right… Um… Oh, right!" Tim snapped his fingers as he found his next question "Do you know what caused it? Was it someone you fought while in patrol?" Tim really hoped the answer would be 'Yes'. A maniac criminal was something he could do something about, maybe even revert Jason's situation

"You just asked two questions, you know." Jason commented smirking. Tim rolled his eyes. Of course Jason would be as petty as to pick on that. He didn't mind, though. He was already straining to get out any questions after the shock of how bad Jason's condition was. Tim just nodded, not wanting to spark an argument about that "To answer your question, though, it is genetic. It wasn't because of my cigarettes, or the booze, or even Lazarus pit. Just my fucked up genetics deciding I'm a waste of space." Tim turned his attention to his hands, opening and closing them as he thought of anything to fix this situation. Jason saw right through him "Stop thinking. You can't possibly do anything about this, even if I had gotten this from fighting a madman, there's no way of possibly knowing that it could be fixed then. Besides, my chances of living aren't zero. Cassidy is making her damnest hard to fix me, and I'm doing some research on my own. If I find a match for a bone marrow transplant I might be able to get rid of this thing, so it's just a matter of time." If you take the time limit out of the equation, he added in his head

"That's it!" Tim yelled excitedly as he jumped from the chair. Jason looked at him with an expression that showed he thought Tim had gone out of his mind, but he hadn't said any snarky comment about Tim yet "I'm going to call everyone we know! There's got to be someone that's a match to you! Even if there isn't, we can use all of our resources to find someone that is." Tim was so excited he got out his cellphone and was browsing for Bruce on his contact list, when a remote control hit his hand, making him let go of the device "What are you-" He lost his voice at Jason's hurt and mostly enraged expression

"Don't. You. _Dare_." Jason said slowly, letting his words sink in deeply on Tim's mind "Don't you dare tell anyone about this."

"Now's not the time for us to tend to your overgrown pride, Jason. You can go back to your tough guy persona once you're healthy again-" Whatever Tim was going to say got lost by the plastic cup Jason threw at him "Stop throwing things at me!"

"You stop kidding yourself! Do you think that any of you people are even _remotely_ genetically close to me?! You call anyone and the only thing that happens are those fake _'I hope you'll get better'_ and _'It's such a shame something like that happened to you'_ when all of us know that those people are in fact **relieved** the liability will be gone. My only chance at getting through this alive is if I track down someone that shares some genetic history with me, even then I'm gonna have a _very_ small chance at convincing that person to donate me some of their bone marrow, 'cause we all know people suck! Grow up, kid! This isn't a movie where my happy ending is just ahead waiting for me, I'm gonna have to build that happy ending myself!"

"That's exactly why I say you should get as much help as you can! Goddamnit, Jason! Are you so stupid you would actually risk dying than to get over yourself and ask for help?!" Tim immediately regretted his choice of words when he saw the hurt on Jason's face. He was going to apologize, but Jason didn't give him the opportunity

"Get out." Where the words he managed to say before his eyes started watering

"Wait, Jason, I'm sorry. It came out wrong."

"Get. Out." Jason's voice was getting choked, as if he was holding back tears

"Come on, I said I'm sorry! I really am!"

"I said GET OUT!" He shouted at Tim, throwing whatever he could reach. A couple tears slipped from his eyes before he angrily swiped them off and forced himself to stop crying. He was looking for more things to throw at Tim when Geller rushed in. He put a hand on Tim's shoulder

"You should go." He said quietly. Tim nodded, grabbed his messenger bag and got out of the room. He heard the doctor's steps behind him, and the instructions he gave to a nurse to help calm Jason down. Tim became relieved when he heard Cassidy's voice. He knew she would help Jason. He was almost at the hospital's entrance when he registered Geller calling out for him. He looked back and stopped walking so the man would be able to catch up with him

"Sorry for making such a scene." He was actually embarrassed for all the shouting that happened

"Oh, it's no trouble at all." The kind smiling doctor told him "Do I see you tomorrow?"

Tim didn't even blink twice before nodding, catching himself on surprise. He actually was thinking this was the end of his part on Jason's drama. There's no way the older man would allow him in after the horrible things he said to him today. 'You need to make up for that.', the sane part of his brain told him, and he agreed to that thought, even though he dreaded seeing Jason the next day.

* * *

"Hey." Cassidy said to Jason as she and the nurse entered the room. The nurse went ahead and gathered the things that were thrown by Jason and put them back where they belonged

"Get out." Jason said as he hid his face with his hands

"I figured you'd need a friend when you're upset." Cassidy pretended she didn't hear him as she sat down on the bedside chair "I won't say anything, I'll just be here for you. Ok?"

"Please. I don't want you to see me like this." Jason's voice was shaky and thick with tears that wanted to spill out

"Roy, would you leave us alone, please?" She turned to the nurse, who nodded and got out of the room. Cassidy lifted the heavy chair with some difficulty, and, making sure to make as much noise as possible so Jason knew she was still there, she turned the chair around. She slumped on it and sighed contently as she got herself confortable. "Now I won't see you like that. Can you tell me what happened?" She thought she wouldn't get an answer and had resigned herself to that when the first words came out of Jason

"I don't ask for help." Cassidy nodded, even with the small amount of time she knew Jason she could tell that about him "When I died, I kept hoping for them to come save me, but they never came." Cassidy was a little confused about Jason's words, she didn't know anything about his fake death to make a conclusion out of anything he was telling her, but she kept nodding to show she was still listening to him "When I came back, they threw me out. Disowned me. Tried to end me. They never tried to help me. Why would they now? I've always been a tool for the family, even now. A good soldier, never a son." She could hear him gasping for breath, trying to even out his voice "I'm okay with being on my own. I'm tough. I'm not stupid." Cassidy couldn't make sense of anything Jason was telling her, but it was okay, she didn't have to. She had said she would just sit there, but she couldn't keep her word. She got up from her seat and walked to Jason. He quickly hid his tear stained face and red eyes, but she still caught a glimpse of it. It broke her heart a little. She wrapped her arms around his still muscled form, and rested her chin on his head. He was choking on his sobs, trying to gather himself back in control.

"It's okay. Even if they're not here for you, I am. You're not on your own. I'm here for you." She kept repeating these word like a charm, until his breath was back under control. She didn't let go of him, figuring he should be the one to say when he'd had enough. After long minutes and no move from him, she looked down, and chuckled when she saw he'd fallen back asleep. A glance at his I.V. drip she saw the amount of sedative had been changed a little, presumably by Roy. That explained the pure, raw, honest answers she had gotten from him. She threw the discarded covers back on Jason, and got out of the room before he woke up again.

* * *

 _ **I'm so sorry for the long hiatus! I've started Law School and my schedule's a crazy mess. It's winter vacation here in Brazil for the next three weeks, so I might upload one or two more chapters before it's time to go back to school. Thank you to anyone who is still with me on this story!**_


	9. Third time's the charm

"Good morning, Jason!" Geller said chirpily as he entered Jason's room. Jason groaned as he pressed a pillow to his face, his eyes not liking the sudden lighting

"How can you be so cheerful when it's six in the freaking morning? That's disgusting!"

"Four years of med school, five years of residency, three years of fellowship and my entire career, all powered by coffee." He answered in an annoyingly happy tone as he checked Jason's charts

"Bullshit. Coffee makes you bitter, not happy. That's why it's black."

"Just like your soul." Geller finished, chuckling. Jason made him a face "Come on, as if you didn't want to say just that!" He teased as he put the chart down and slipped on a pair of sterile gloves "Let me see your incision." He said as he lifted the covers and pulled at the bandage on Jason's abdomen. His hand ghosted over the stitches, checking for anything out of the ordinary. When he didn't find anything he turned to the nurse beside him and ordered her to change his bandages "Looks good. I'm going to take a sample of your blood today, and doctor Cassidy will see if you can go back to taking your medication." He said as he took a syringe

"Then I'll get out of this place?" Jason asked, hoping the answer had changed since the last time he asked, the day before.

"Then you'll go back to your chemotherapy, and if you behave yourself, don't injure yourself more and rest, _maybe_ I can consider your check out in two more weeks."

"Since when are you the boss of me?" Jason growled at him as the nurse finished changing his bandages and Geller put a hand on his shoulder so he could lie back down

"Since I cut you open and stitched you closed last week."

"Good times." Jason grinned and Geller rolled his eyes

"Just rest, alright?"

"Yessir." Jason would've done a mock salute if his right arm wasn't hooked with a bunch of needles and wires, and his left hand wasn't busy flipping Geller off

Geller rolled his eyes again and gathered the charts after handing the blood sample for a medical intern to run in the lab

"I'll come by to visit you later." He said to Jason as he left

"Can't wait for it, Doc."

* * *

Jason tried to go back to sleep, but he had been doing so much of that lately he was getting sick of it. He wanted to go for a stroll, but the incision on his abdomen made it hard for him to even sit up, he really didn't want to find out how much it would hurt for him to get up and walk around. He laid on his bed and let his mind wander around.

Last week's events made it crystal clear for him that he wouldn't be able to go back to patrol until his treatment was over. He would need to find another way to make it seem like he was healthy and patrolling every day or the bats would get suspicious. His first thought was to hack into their systems and make his tracker signal go around the city, as if he was patrolling around. This thought was quickly dismissed because if there was anyone needing help around these areas no one would help them, because the other bats would think he was already there and they knew he hated when someone got in his way. His second thought was to keep patrolling anyway, but the scar on his stomach already discarded that option for him before he had even finished considering it. He could ask for someone to cover his area of the city for him, but the Replacement has already used the excuse he is travelling for him, to say he would need to travel for a long period again so soon would raise too many flags in the bats' minds. He could also cut all ties to the bats and go back to be his own man, but that would be just about the same as shouting at them that there was something wrong with him. Besides, he knew that if he did something like breaking his ties with the bats the Replacement would sure as hell spill his secret for all the others.

He stored this little problem in the back of his mind, feeling he wouldn't get an answer for that at the moment.

His mind wandered to other things he had yet to solve, like the ten open cases he had. Two of them were almost done, all that's left is to arrest the fuckers. He realized that was something he could ask the bats to do for him, since at the moment he was supposed to be in other continent taking care of things that were none of their businesses, as he none too gently had told Bruce when he called him the other day. He reached for his cell phone that was on his bedside table, and dialed the Batcave.

"What is it, Red Hood?" Came the gruff child's voice

"Demon. Haven't heard of you in a while. Alfred's finally letting you down in the basement?" Jason could help himself as he ruffled the young bird's feather

"Tt. I was never injured to begin with! I don't believe you called just to annoy me, so what do you want?" Straight to the case. Like father, like son

"George Raymond and Hellen Stone. I'm going to send you people the case files, all that's left is to arrest them."

"Tt." Was his answer before Damian cut the call off. Jason smirked, annoying people was the sole reason he existed.

He looked at the time, it wasn't even an hour since Geller came to do his rounds, and Jason was already bored. Thinking was giving him a headache, he turned on the TV and settled for the infomercials, wishing he had his credit cards in hand so he could buy some nonsensical shit he would never use

"Damn, that pan is neat." He heard the comment from the doorway and turned to see Cassidy entering the room. She sat on the chair beside him and handed him a cup of Jell-O, something that became their morning ritual

"You're late today." Was her greeting

"I had to take care of an emergency. One of my patients had a surgery and I wanted to make sure of everything that happened in it."

"Hmm." Jason hummed around the spoon on his mouth "By the way, is my blood test out yet?"

"No, it's still in the lab. No need to rush, you'll be stuck with us for at least two more weeks, no matter the results of it."

"Nah, I'll make you get sick of me in a week and then I'll be sent my way home."

"Is that your fabulous escape plan?" Cassidy asked chuckling

"Yup." He finished his Jell-O and handed the empty cup back to her. She put it in the bedside table, and fiddled with her short nails before asking the same question she's asked him seven times already

"Hey, Tim's here. Do you want to see him this time?" She already knew the answer, but asked anyway

"I do, actually. Tell him to come in." Jason's answer caught her so off guard she jumped from the chair and checked his temperature with her hands, not finding it out of the ordinary she got her flashlight from her white coat and went to flash it in front of his eyes, checking for signs of a concussion, but Jason batted away her hand before she could get it near his eyes "I don't have a concussion or anything. I just changed my mind for today." She bolted from the room with a quick command for him to 'sit tight she would be back soon', but came back a few seconds later and picked up the Jell-O cup to throw it away. She didn't want to risk Jason changing his mind, so she didn't even spare him a glance as she bolted once again from the room. Ever since the first day Jason's been hospitalized, Tim almost never left the waiting room. He would come in the morning, and sit on the hard waiting room's chair the entire day, then he would go out when it got dark and only come back the next morning. Cassidy knew he didn't go home to sleep, since he was always more tired when he came back than when he left, so she presumed he worked at night. She couldn't comprehend the fact that a son of a billionaire would work so hard, but then again, maybe that's how they stay billionaires, right?

She almost ran into the object of her thoughts when she passed the cafeteria, and almost drenched both of them in the hot coffee Tim was holding, but both were saved by Tim's quick reflexes. He greeted her with a sad smile, waiting for her to tell him Jason didn't want to see him again, already resigning himself to another whole day of sitting in a hard chair waiting for a chance that Jason's whimsical personality would get so annoyed at his insistence he would eventually allow Tim to go see him. He waited as she panted holding her knees, and she grinned at him when she looked up. The spark of hope made his heartbeat race a little, and the signs of lack of sleep were retreating from his face as the contagious smile infected him a little, making the corners of his mouth go up for a moment before he caught himself and had his face go back to a neutral expression

"He changed his mind today. You can go see him."

It took Tim a moment to comprehend what the doctor said to him, but he followed her anyway. When it finally clicked in his mind that Jason had given him what was surely his last chance to talk, he vowed to not mess up again.

"Will you stay in the room this time?" He asked uncertainly to the doctor beside him, acknowledging the fact that this woman who knew his brother for a little less than a month was already better for Jason than Tim and his family ever were to him in over a decade. He really hoped she would stay in the room, as a moral support to Jason.

Cassidy frowned and checked at her watch "Well, sure, but I can't stay for too long, I have an appointment with a patient in half an hour. Whatever shit you two have between you, you'll have to solve it yourselves." As they reached the hallway leading to Jason's room, Cassidy grabbed Tim's arm "Look, I can tell you're a good guy, but this is the last chance I'm giving you. If this time things end with Jason screaming at you to go away, you go away. You don't come back again, because even though I can't do anything about what happens to Jason outside this hospital, I'm the one in charge of him in here, and if this time I see you're doing more harm than good to him, I'll make sure you won't get anywhere near this hospital while he's inside here." Tim frowned at this woman. Who does she think she is to tell him off like that? He really wanted to put her in her place, but deep inside he knew she was right, the first time they met ended with Jason being rushed into surgery and the second time Jason ended up being sedated. With a nod, Tim walked the last few meters to Jason's room, and pushed open the door to find his brother engrossed in an infomercial, his cellphone to his ear as he told Tim's credit card information to the other side of the line so he could buy an electrical grill

"Hey, that's my credit card information!" Tim shouted at him and made a move to take away Jason's cell phone forcefully. Jason put a foot on Tim's shoulder to keep him away and put a hand to the microphone of his cellphone to muffle what he was going to say

"Are you really about to use force on the cancer guy who's just had a surgery?" He asked Tim with a judgmental stare. Tim backed off with a huff and crossed his arms in front of his chest, waiting for Jason to finish his call. Jason grinned, who knew the cancer card was so effective?

"Yes, I'm still here. The address is the one I told you before. Okay. Good." Tim tapped his foot impatiently as Jason finished the delivery details of his new grill. The older man grinned mockingly at him, showing he was enjoying annoying him

"Why did you use _my_ credit card?"

"You're rich, you won't miss the money." Jason said as if that explained everything

"You're rich too."

"Not as much as you." Tim shrugged. It was true

"So, why did you suddenly decide to grace me with your presence?"

"I was bored."

"Well, let me amuse you, then." Tim sat down on the bedside chair. He crossed his arms thoughtfully, trying to come up with a conversation topic they could have with Cassidy still in the room "Oh, Dick finally broke your couch." He settled for that one. It seemed to have gotten Jason's attention, for the man sat up straighter in his bed

"No fucking way. How'd he do it?"

"He just slumped in it." Jason bust out laughing, surprising both Tim and Cassidy. The woman came to Jason's side to help him stop laughing when he winced at his stitches being pulled

"What's so funny about that?" She asked with a smile, not really getting the point of this conversation

Jason took a gulp of the water she offered him and sighed, chuckled a little more and rested the cup on the bedside table "Me and my "brother"" Jason used the word out of not having a better one to describe his strange relationship with the bats " made this bet that if he managed to break my old couch I would let him buy me a new one." Cassidy sort of nodded, not really getting what went on in rich people's minds "I've been reinforcing it with metal plates and stuff ever since then. Dick had tried every single move on his book, trying to break it. He even threw some dumbbells on it once, but the weights just rolled down to his foot." Jason snorted at the memory "And he finally breaks it with his fat ass!" He bust out laughing once again, not really caring at his stiches being pulled

"You two need a hobby." Cassidy commented, and even Tim joined Jason at laughing at her comment. If the woman knew what their hobby was, she would probably faint "What did I say now?" She snapped at them, not liking being laughed at. Jason and Tim were only starting to get their breath when they crumbled into laughter once again after taking a look at her "You know what, screw you two! I have an actual patient who needs me!" She stomped out of the room. Cassidy rested her head on the closed door, letting out a real smile as she thought that maybe this time things would work out between the two of them. She glimpsed at her watch and gasped at the hour, rushing to her office so she could prep herself for her next patient

"So, um, how's everyone doing?" Jason asked awkwardly when they realized they were left to themselves by Cassidy

"Good, actually. No one's been hurt in patrol since Damian got shot, which must be a record. Me and Dick have been covering for your section of the town, so don't worry." Jason nodded. He was actually grateful to them for doing that, since he hadn't patrolled on his section of the town ever since he fainted on the grocery store. Crime rates must have gone to the roof there. Of course he would never tell them how grateful he was, though "Actually, about that, I've got a proposal for you."

"I'm too young to think about marriage, Tim." Jason quickly shot him down. Tim wanted to whack the older man on the head, but thankfully he held himself down

"Sorry, you're not my type."

"Well, that's too bad for you, 'cause I'm a real catch."

" _Anyway,_ I've been thinking about patrolling your section of the town while you're in treatment. What do you think?" Tim asked uncertainly

Jason pretended to consider his proposal, but he couldn't be more glad about the offer. He dreaded eventually having to get down to asking Tim to do that, so a chance for him to not stain his pride and still not let down on his vigilante hero was something that was almost too good to be true. _Wait, it was too good to be true_

"What's the catch?" He asked Tim, who looked as if he was caught by surprise by the question

"There's no catch." Jason eyed him distrustfully "Look, I don't want the people who live in your part of the town to suffer because of our personal shit. We both know that there's no way you can keep patrolling in your condition, and the only solution other than this is if I tell the others about you, _which I don't plan on doing._ " He quickly added before Jason got any wrong ideas

"No catch?" Jason asked once again and reached out his hand. Tim was almost grasping his hand when he remembered something

"Oh, wait. There's two conditions, though." He said and Jason quickly retracted his hand, as if it had been burned

"I knew there was going to be a catch!" he accused

"A condition isn't a trick, Jason. I'm going to help you with the vigilante stuff, but" He lifted one finger "You can't go out to patrol, or I swear I'll spill the beans to every one we know." He lifted another finger "You let me help take care of you while you're being treated. If you don't, then there's nothing I can do about it. I won't tell anyone, that's your business not mine, and I'll still patrol for you, I can't let people get hurt because of us." He looked down awkwardly at his hand "That feels more like a request than a condition." He looked back at Jason "A condition and a request, Jason. What do you think?"

"It's a reasonable condition." Jason said after a moment of thought. He extended his hand for Tim to shake, and so the deal was sealed between the two of them


	10. Capisci?

Jason and Tim stared at one another. After their quick bonding time, both men felt awkward in the presence of each other. Now that the professional part was over, they didn't know how to deal with the personal part. Both silently blamed Bruce for that.

"Sooo…" Tim started, not being able to stand awkward silence one second longer. "What's you plan from now on?"

"My plan?"

"Yeah. I mean, you possibly couldn't just expect us to not contact you for as long as you don't contact us and hope for the best." Jason blushed. That was exactly what his plan consisted of "You did!" Tim accused him and Jason's face got a redder tone "Really, Jason? It took me a week to find out, and last week Dick messed up your apartment big time! He came really close to just stumble upon your prescription and then he would find out about everything."

"He what?" Jason hadn't heard about Dick's redecoration on his apartment, only that he had broken his couch.

Tim cursed silently "He um… He pranked your apartment in retaliation to a prank you did to him a while ago." Tim really hoped Jason had indeed done something to Dick so that he could believe it was his own fault. Apparently not, since he just glared harder at Tim.

"Yeah, _I_ did something to him." Tim at least had the decency to look away. He cleared his throat and, forcibly, changed back the subject

"So, do you see my point? If you really want to keep your condition a secret, you should at least change safe houses." ' _Preferably to one that had an elevator_ ', he thought to himself

Jason sighed. "Yeah, I really should." ' _Victory!_ ', Tim thought to himself, mentally patting himself on the back

"Do you want me to look one up for you?"

Jason shook his head "Nah, I already have one." Tim frowned at him. When Jason and Bruce agreed to work together once again, one of the conditions was that Jason had to tell them where all his safe houses were.

"Jason…" He began to scold him for that, but shook his head, deciding it wasn't worth the headache to argue with Jason Todd "Where is it?"

Jason shook his head once more "Not going to tell you. You could lead the other bats right to it without even noticing it."

"What?! But you agreed to let me help you not even five minutes ago!"

Jason sighed. "I agreed to your condition, I never said anything about your request." Tim wasn't convinced "Lend me your phone." Tim wordlessly got it out. With a few quick swipes, Jason opened the camera app and gave the phone back to Tim. "You'll want to record this." Jason lifted his left hand, since it wasn't hooked to anything "I, Jason Peter Todd, promise to not go out to patrol for as long as I am sick." He lowered his hand "I won't accept your help because I don't need it." He said with a sad smile. "Ask me again when I need it." It didn't go unnoticed by Tim that Jason didn't say 'if', he said 'when'. He nodded at the older man

"So, even if I don't help take care of you, can I still come visit you here?"

"S-Sure." Jason was taken aback that Tim still wanted to see him even after being turned down "Just don't come here too often, I can't stand you that much." Jason was no idiot, he had seen the tiredness on Tim's face and body expression. The guy probably hadn't gotten much sleep in the hard hospital chairs

"Right. No coming here too much. Got it."

After that, conversation flowed naturally between the two men. Once it died down, Jason grabbed the comic books Cassidy had smuggled him from the peds floor. He read quietly as Superman got his ass handed to him by the Batman, and laughed out loud when they hugged after the Batman had freed Superman from his brainwashed state

"Hey, does Bruce know about this shit?" he asked Tim, and when he got no answer he looked to see if he was still there. To his surprise, Tim was still in the room. He had fallen asleep, his head resting awkwardly on the backrest of the armchair to the side of the patient bed. Jason winced in sympathy to the monstrous neck pain he was sure Tim would have to deal later. He looked around the room, and thinking it would be a short walk, he got out of bed. He had forgotten how much walking around after a surgery _hurt_ , but he pushed through the pain. His hand gripping tightly the IV stand, he used it as a cane to help him. It was only after painful, _slow,_ five minutes that he reached the closet on the side of the room, and got out the spare blanket and pillow he knew was there. After figuring out the engineering needed to take the two objects back to his bed, Jason started the painful walk back. He jumped when the door opened and Geller walked in.

"Jason! What are you-" He stopped in the middle of his scolding when his patient waved his arms around, making shushing sounds so he got quiet. He walked to him "What are you doing?" he whispered to Jason

"Taking these back to my bed." He answered simply and Geller took the objects from him before he could protest.

"Here, let me help you." He wrapped Jason's arm around his shoulder and helped support his weight back to the patient bed. As they reached the bed and Geller was about to spread the new blanket on the bed, Jason took it from him and, with a gentleness Geller had thought wasn't possible to find in the man, he wrapped it around his sleeping brother's shoulders. The younger man didn't even move or make a sound, as he was exhausted. Jason then grabbed the extra pillow and fluffed it before putting it behind Tim's head for support. He then sighed and began the arduous process of getting on his bed. It didn't take long at all because Geller helped him, despite Jason's vehement (and frankly, _dirty_ ) protests. He looked at Geller and his face got beet reed

"You tell a living soul about this and **I'll kill you dead**. _Capisci_?" Despite having helped this same man get on his bed not even a minute ago, the glare and the murderous aura he was receiving from Jason frankly shook Geller's soul to the core. His hand sweating and heart beating too fast for his liking, his congested throat only allowed him to nod his head frankly. He quickly made a dumb excuse and got out (or rather, fled) from the room

* * *

 **I'm back! Yay! Sorry for the short chapter, this one is more of an introduction, really. I want to make a Christmas special for this story. So, I don't think it's that clear on the story, but, in my head, Jason got his diagnosis in early to mid-September. My plan is to update as fast as I can before the 24th of December so I can fit a Christmas Special here in the main story. But, if I don't manage to do that, I'll post it as a separate one-shot! Anyway, I want you guys to vote on the poll on my profile for what do you want the theme of the special to be. I'll close the poll at around the 22nd or the 23rd, so please vote! If you have any headcannon for this story (it doesn't even have to be Christmas-related) please tell me and I'll do my best to make it true!**

 **P.S.: I received a review stating I'm dragging the story too long. I'm sorry if that's how you guys are feeling, but I want to deepen Tim and Jason's relationship for a couple chapters (around three or four), then I'll make things a** _ **little**_ **worse for Jason than they have to be so that he finally has no other choice than to tell the other bats about his condition. I feel that with Jason, he is really the sort of character that you have to push him to his limits before he gives in**


	11. Second chemo session

Tim rubbed his eyes tiredly and set on to lathering his face up so he could shave. He hadn't slept at all the last five days (if one was honest you could say he hasn't slept at all the last eight years of his life, but one wasn't honest). He had just got in two strokes with the razor when his cell phone rung, the low sound pounding on his aching brain. Tim cursed at the device, but decided that looking like a decent human being came first than whoever was calling him, so he continued to shave. The device stopped ringing, and Tim sucked in a relieved breath. He was even humming, so happy he was to have this small moment to himself, but one glance to the cell phone reminded him that the real world was on his neck, waiting for him to finish shaving. This thought made him shave even slower, milking these few precious minutes where all that mattered in the world was to give himself the closest shave possible. As if throwing a tantrum, his phone rang again, this time so loudly Tim jumped and nicked his face with the razor. He cursed so brightly even Jason would be proud, and wiped his face with a towel. He took a few seconds to compose himself, but seeing the droplet of blood on his face on the mirror got him even more agitated. He glanced at the screen, and of course the only human being who dared to call him at 7 o'clock in the morning would be Bruce.

"Did you seriously just hacked my phone so you could talk to me?!" He accused

"Maybe. I need you to come down to the manor ASAP."

"Haven't you had enough of ordering me around the past week?" When the man gave no answer, Tim huffed "Is it really important? I have a meeting at W.E. in about 45 minutes."

"I already cancelled that for you."

" _You what?!_ Bruce! Stop doing that, damn it!" Tim ignored the man calling him out for his language "How am I supposed to do my job when you keep getting in the way?!" Tim wasn't the kindest person in the morning, especially before he had his first cup of coffee

"You'll figure out a way. I'll see you in 20 minutes."

"Ugh, this better be really important, do you hear me?!"

Tim wanted to throw his phone on the wall when his answer was the beep that the call had been cut off

* * *

Tim sighed as he looked at the gigantic manor. Talking to Bruce about crime wasn't really a way to start the day. He closed the door of his car with a thud and tightened his coat around himself. Cold was beginning to settle down in Gotham

"Hey, Timmy!" Dick's energetic voice in the morning was really annoying. Tim noticed the fact he wasn't wearing his uniform on a Wednesday, and deduced Bruce had called in sick for Dick as well. At the same time this thought annoyed him, it also chilled his guts. Something really bad must be going on

"He called in sick for you too?" Tim already knew the answer, but wanted to start a conversation as they headed for Bruce's office

"Yup! It's a Wayne family reunion, Timbo!" Only Dick could manage an sarcastically excited tone "YAY!" Tim snorted

"Yaaay…"

"Grayson!" The arrogant voice called out and Dick and Tim turned to see Damian on the doorway of Bruce's office "Oh, _great._ The hindrance is here." The child turned away and headed back to the cave. Tim closed his eyes and silently counted to ten, hoping in his mind the young ex-assassin would slip in the stairs and break his neck

"Damian!" Dick huffed and went after the child to tell him off ' _It's useless, Dick_ ', is what Tim wanted to say, but he decided the sooner he was done there the more his mental health would thank him

As he reached the batcave, he could see Dick scolding Damian on the side, and Bruce glaring at the batcomputer, as if that would give him the answers he was looking for. Tim was about to open his mouth and ask what was so important

"Drake!"

Tim's temple twitched. "What?" Tim really wished Damian was still injured, that way the batcave would still be his Demon-free sanctuary. But after near a month in the bench, the child was one step from having the bats go insane, so Bruce relented and let him go back to action

"It was brought to my attention that apparently it is rude to say the truth-"

"Hey, that is not what I told you to say!" Dick interrupted. Damian tt-d and grumbled under his breath

"Your weak mental strength prevents you from accepting reality, so-"

" _Damian!_ " Dick was about to scold him once again, but Tim stopped him

"It's fine, Dick. I don't expect Satan to have any social ability. That's why he's being raised as a gremlin in the depths of Wayne Manor, away from socie-" Tim's speech was interrupted by Damian throwing a brick at his face. "THAT'S IT! YOU'RE GOING DOWN, SPAWN!" Tim yelled before lauching himself at Damian. The two youngest bat-brothers tried to murder each other as Dick tried to separate them. Damian bit his arm and Dick yelled as he let him go

"You guys don't stop now I swear I'll sedate the both of you!" Dick threatened as he rubbed his arm. He huffed and went to where the sleeping gas grenades were kept. As he was preparing to throw the grenade at the two fighting monsters, Bruce raised from his chair. He pried Damian and Tim apart and dragged them to the debriefing table. Dick sighed in relief and followed him, touching his left cheek, which would most likely bruise. He took a seat at the table and took the folder Bruce handed him. It contained various photos and locations, but what called his attention was the name on the first page:

" **Jason Peter Todd, A.K.A. Red Hood."**

"Um, Bruce, why are we being debriefed about Jason?" He asked

"He has been off the radar for almost a month-"

"Yeah, so? He has been off the radar for even longer than that before, you never gave a damn about it." Tim countered defensively

"Yes, the amount of time he has been missing doesn't bother me. What I care about are the ten murdered criminals that came up in the last two weeks, all bearing the mark of a red bat somewhere in their bodies." Tim paused. He hadn't heard about that. Though, it's no news that criminals being murdered wouldn't make the news. Especially small-time ones like these

"So, your first thought is to blame Jason?" Bruce opened his mouth to retort, but Tim didn't give him the chance "Let me get this straight: Jason is missing for almost a month. No movement from him or any of his known aliases. You don't care about that. Heck, maybe you didn't even think about him in that time-frame, no "I hope he's not hurt" or maybe even a "Is he even still alive?". But then a couple of criminals get murdered-" Okay, Tim had to admit that ten murders were an alarming amount "and the first thought you have about Jason in almost a month is "He killed these men!"?" Tim got up from the chair and headed to the cave entrance "You are unbelievable, Bruce Wayne!"

"Give me one reason not to deduce this is Jason's work." Tim stopped in his tracks. _'Because he's got cancer, that's why!'_ , is what he wanted to throw in Bruce's face, but he had promised Jason not to. Tim cursed to the depths of his soul the day he agreed to keep Jason's little secret. He marched to where Bruce was and jabbed his finger in his chest.

"Deduce? Is this deducing? The way I see this is just a biased conclusion that's coming from a man who can't even see what's in front of him!" At this point Dick (and even Damian) stood from their chairs, ready to intervene if things got out of hand "Well, if you want reasons, let me give them to you! What about the first and most glaring reason: Jason hasn't killed in over a year! Second: Jason only killed the really bad ones, like, dealing drugs to little children bad. He didn't kill Joe, the guy who mugged a couple people so he could pay his bills! If these aren't good enough reasons for you, _please let me entertain you!_ How about the fact that Jason _promised_ he wouldn't kill again? Or maybe that these "clues" are too good enough to be true? Please tell me when you had enough, because I can keep at this _all_ day! Maybe you neglected that Dick and I are covering for his area of the town while he's doing who-knows-what. Or that he asked me to watch over his apartment for him. Do those sound like things a murdering psycho would do? No? Well-"

"Hey, Timmy, that's enough." Dick put a hand on Tim's shoulder. Tim batted his hand away, but stopped yelling at Bruce "Bruce, why do you think this is Red Hood's work?" He asked calmly, ignoring the tight breath he heard Tim sucking in

Bruce took the folder nearest him and took a few crime scene pictures from it. "Because there is no one else that could have done this. Height of the murderer matches with Jason's. The firearms, the _modus operandi_ , the time of the crimes, the bat symbol… Everything about these scream Jason. The only thing that doesn't is the targeted group, but even that doesn't deviate much."

"Have you tried contacting Jason himself?" Dick asked as he looked at the pictures more closely

"I can't reach him." The way Bruce said it flipped the switch in Dick's head. He was worried about Jason. He knew Bruce would deny it until the day he died. Even his ghost would keep on denying it. Really, what is wrong with this family?

"I agree with Tim, this _is_ too convenient. We should track Jason down, though, just to be safe."

"Are you serious?! I just gave you-" Tim started, but Dick held up a hand, silencing him

"It's just a precaution, Tim." He said with a serious expression." Tim huffed and threw his hands in the air

"You know what?" Fine! Do what you want! Just don't expect me to help! I'll go find the _real_ murderer while you waste time and resources!" _'Oh, Timmy.'_ , Dick thought, but just nodded

"Fine. Once we have Jason locked down we will continue the investigation from your point of view, see if it brings us anywhere."

Tim just grunted and kept walking, not wanting to stay even one more second near Bruce.

* * *

He slammed his car door with way more strength than needed. His tires screeched as he raced out of the property, his next destination set in his mind. He parked the black Audi and went to the reception. He took a deep breath, his nice guy persona already falling back in place naturally, he smiled brightly at the receptionist

"Hey, Sarah." The woman looked up from her screen, and blushed when she saw him. Tim was sure the woman had a major crush on him. Who doesn't?

"Tim! Hey!" The woman's eyes flicked between her screen and Tim, and her smile was a little on the forced side. Tim's bat-paranoia kicked in, and he dropped his smile, already full-on on his business mode

"Is something wrong? Did something happen to Jason?"

"What?!" Sarah gave a nervous laugh "No! Why would you think something like that?" Tim was sure something had happened and Jason had took him out of his visitor's list. He had already put his business smile back and was about to flirt the answer out of Sarah

"Sarah! Did Mr. Todd come here?" He heard a young man, probably an intern, ask as he ran to them. Behind him he could feel Sarah trying to silently tell him to shut up. Tim grabbed the young man's attention as he stepped in front of him, extending his hand so he could shake

"Hi, I'm Jason Todd's brother. My name is Tim Drake" The young man dumbly shook his hand back and Tim smirked internally. Physical contact was the first step to a successful business transaction

"Hi, um, George Smith." The intern reminded himself it was polite to introduce yourself when meeting someone

"Is something wrong with my brother?" Tim asked with an intimidating smile. George looked every part like a cornered prey, his predator ready to pounce

"U-Um, yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. Actually, I don't know, sir. Mister Todd sneaked away from his room. We haven't been able to find him yet." Tim mentally face-palmed. Is Jason what, five? He quickly bid his goodbye from Sarah and George, and headed to the floor Jason's room was. He could hear Sarah calling George an idiot as he distanced from them

As he got to Jason's room, he could see that he had fled his room quite hastily. The covers on the bed were untidy and Jason left his cell phone in his bedside table. The idiot clearly didn't think through before getting out.

Tim sighed. It wasn't even nine in the morning and his day had already been too long.

He exited the room and almost bumped with Jason. Both men cursed as they held a hand over their hearts, trying to calm down

"Jason!"

"Shit."

"What are you doing?"

"I forgot my phone." Jason answered as if that made everything alright

"No, I mean, why are you sneaking out of your room?"

"It's none of your freaking business." Jason grunt out as he checked the time on the clock in the room and hurried to get his phone and get out of there. Then it clicked in Tim's head. It was almost time for his chemotherapy

"Are you trying to get out of your chemo treatment?" He asked Jason. The older man froze, and tried to stutter out an answer to that. "Why? Are you afraid?"

"W-What?!" Jason spluttered indignantly "The fuck? I ain't scared of anything! I'm freaking Red Hood!"

"Yeah, you're scared." Tim crossed his arms and leaned on the bed. Jason blushed bright red and looked down. He was actually scared shitless. It would be the second session in his whole treatment, and Cassidy had told him that they would have to give him stronger drugs because the three weeks he had to stop treatment because of his injury had set the treatment back by a fair amount. If the first chemo session had been bad enough, he was terrified to see how the second one would go.

These few minutes he wasted with Tim had actually cost him his life, for Cassidy entered the room then. He knew he wouldn't be able to say no to the woman

"There you are!" Cassidy said out of breath. She had ran through the entire property of the hospital after him, and then remembered he had left his phone back in his room. She had planned to use the device for leverage on him, but apparently there was no need for that anymore "Are you ready?"

' _As if I'd ever be.'_ Jason thought, but forced himself to nod stiffly. Tim saw how tense he was

"Hey, will it help you if I stay here with you?" he asked

"The hell? Do you wanna hold my hand too while you're at it?" Jason snarled at Tim. Tim winced, Jason had this tendency to become aggressive when he was scared

"No, I mean, we could just talk. I have some work stuff to you." Jason eyed him distrustfully, but nodded at him. It would actually be a lot of help "Can he have his treatment here in his room? Since we'll talk about confidential matters, it would be better if it was private." Cassidy seemed to think through his demand, but gave in anyways. They would have to probably carry Jason back to his room if he had it somewhere else

"Sure. We'll set up here." She said the last part to the nurse and the resident accompanying her

After about half an hour, everything was ready for Jason's treatment to begin. As Cassidy came with the needle closer to the port in Jason's arm, Tim hovered around her like a hawk. She honestly thought it was kind of cute.

"Okay, Jason. All set." She checked the drip once again "As I said before, the drugs are stronger this time, so you might feel stronger side effects." She said that mostly to Tim, since Jason already knew about it

"What kind of side effects?" Tim asked

"He might feel nauseous, and feel fatigue. I'll leave you two to yourselves, but if you think he is losing consciousness I want you to push the call button and a doctor will come running." She said as she handed Jason a basin so he could puke and left the room

"How're you feeling? Any side effects?" Jason chuckled

"Not yet." He settled back in the bed "What did you want to talk about?"

"Oh, right. Have you heard about some criminals being murdered the last two weeks?" Jason perked at that.

"No. Should I be sad about that?" He asked sarcastically "As you can see, I'm in no shape to go walking around killing bad guys." He said as he waved at himself

"No, no! I never thought it was you!"

"Bruce probably did." Tim's face got dark and Jason knew he had hit jackpot. He chuckled "Good old Bruce. Did you tell him why it couldn't have been me?"

"No."

"Thank you."

"But whoever's killing these people is obviously framing you. Red bat and all." He showed Jason the pictures he could snap before he and Bruce fought

"Wow. I must be more famous than I had thought."

"Some people would use the word hated." Jason snorted

"That works too."

"Dick and Bruce said they are going to try and track you down. I know they will start by looking for you abroad, but it won't take long before they turn their search back to Gotham." Jason nodded

"Thanks for the heads up."

"There's also the fact of this copy-cat. He knows your height, your m.o., even your guns. There is a high chance he knows your secret identity as well." Jason nodded. That was indeed a high possibility. He already knew where Tim was going to take this conversation "I want to stay with you at your place. So I can protect you." Jason sighed. He reeealy didn't want Tim's help, but he also knew he couldn't protect himself without the kind of ammo that all you need is a round in-between the eyes and your enemy was dead. He also knew that if he killed someone he would be sent to Blackgate, and he doubted their health-care was any good

"Fine. Do what you want. But make sure your stupid ass won't lead them right to me or I'll be _really_ pissed."

Tim scoffed. Who did he think he was? Tim was just the only guy who was a better detective than _the Batman_. He had figured out Batman and Robin's real identities by the time he was nine. His thoughts were interrupted as Jason suddenly became pale. He bolted out of his chair, but Jason was already emptying his stomach on the basin he held. Tim scrunched his nose at the smell, but said nothing. He awkwardly patted Jason on the back, but when it looked like he became even sicker at the physical contact, Tim retracted his hand and watched helplessly as Jason retched. When he thought Jason was done, he reached out and took the basin so he could change it with a new one, but Jason pulled the object protectively closer

"No." He said weakly and started puking again. Tim stood there, gaping like a fish, and decided to make himself of some use. He went to the bathroom and took a new basin, and walked back to the room. Jason hadn't stopped retching for a moment, Tim stood on his side, waiting for a chance to change the basins. When Jason stopped for a breath, Tim quickly changed the objects, and carried the used basin back to the bathroom, as far away from himself as he could, and left it there for a poor nurse to take care of.

When he came back, Jason was dry heaving, as there was nothing left on his stomach to spill. Tim was apparently wrong, since Jason started to puke his stomach acid. He didn't know if this was the kind of situation he was supposed to call a doctor, but he didn't care. Abusing of the call button, as if pressing it harder would make the doctor come any faster, Tim was beginning to lose his calm when Cassidy busted through the door. She rushed to Jason's side, and checked the IV drip before turning to Tim.

"What's wrong?!" She asked him

" _What is wrong?!_ Did you even look at Jason?!" Cassidy winced

"This type of reaction is to be expected."

"Well then, give him some nausea medicine or something." Cassidy shook her head as she ran her hand through Jason's sweaty hair and checked his forehead for his temperature

"I can't, it will put unnecessary strain on his body." Tim was furious

"I'll tell you what is unnecessary strain! This!" He pointed to Jason, who was moaning weakly over the basin. His face was wet, but if you asked him he would tell you it's because of contracting his face muscles, not because he felt like crap. He spit on the tray

"Stop shouting, you're making my head hurt." He moaned at Tim, who got a sorrowful face on

"Sorry." Tim said and sat on the bedside of Jason. The older man would have glared at him any other time, but the drugs had his defenses down. Right then, he craved the closeness. Cassidy approached him, and kneeled before him

"Look, you'll feel really sick the first couple of times, but then you'll get used to it and it won't be as bad. That's how you fight cancer. It gets worse before it gets better." Jason wanted to laugh at the woman. Who ever gets used to being sick? "Do you want me to stay here?" She asked him

"No, you're probably busy, right?" Cassidy shook her head

"No, I cleaned my schedule for today, actually. I have all the time in the world today." Jason hadn't even told her whether she could stay or not and Cassidy was already pushing a chair beside the bed. She patted her lab coat and pulled out a pack of cards "I stole these from the peds section." She announced as she held up her loot. Jason snorted

"What is it with you and the peds wing?" Cassidy shrugged

"Well, they've got the nicest things. I think it's because it's full of sick kids. No one can beat that." Jason chuckled again

"True."

With the arrival of Cassidy and her deck of cards, it didn't take at all for Jason's drip to empty out. Their game flowed nicely, the only interruption was when Jason had to puke. Cassidy wiped the metaphorical floor with Jason and Tim. The two brothers had no idea how a civilian could be that good at playing old maid.

"All done!" Cassidy announced as the resident took out the chemo drip. Jason slumped back in his bed, now that his nerves weren't on edge, the lack of adrenalin showed him how sick he actually felt. The room spun at an incredible speed, the only thing that made it worse was when he closed his eyes and lost all sense of space. His head ached so badly even the clock ticking bothered him. It was like the worst hangover of all times. He felt a touch on his left shoulder and glanced at Tim, who was talking to him. He could hear what he said, but his brain made no sense of it. He felt like he should probably nod, though, so that is what he did

"Hey, is he alright?" Tim asked Cassidy. Jason was really freaking him out. He was looking at him owlishly, his pupils fretted like he was drugged and he kept on nodding, even though Tim wasn't talking to him anymore. The doctor checked Jason's pupil, and, finding nothing out of what was expected, she sighed.

"We should let him rest." She put her hand over Jason's eyes. His head bobbed around, and he put his hand over hers, an effort to remove it, but soon he stilled and his hand dropped. She lifted her hand to see he had passed out.

* * *

 **As I said on the author note of the previous chapter, I want to make a Christmas special for this story. So, I would really appreciate it if you voted on what theme do you want for the special on the poll that's happening on my profile. If you have any headcannons for this story (even if it's not Christmas-related) please tell me and I'll do my best to make it true!**

 **As always, please don't take any medical information on this fanfiction seriously, it's probably wrong anyways! If you are a professional in the area and find any mistakes, please notify me!**

 **I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it**


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